Now go back to 2 Chronicles 30.
I thought of several titles to this. We looked at this. It's been quite a while ago.
The last time we looked at it, I gave it the title of Worship
Service Heard in Heaven. But I could have titled it Letters
from the King or A Pleasing Proclamation. For gladness and joy in Jerusalem. For a command to come and keep.
But I titled it this, Why We Should Come to the House of the
Lord. It's what verse 1 says, Hezekiah
the king sent all Israel and Judah and wrote letters to Ephraim,
Manasseh, everywhere that they should come to the house of the
Lord at Jerusalem. They should come. We should.
Shouldn't we? Why do we come here? Well, this
is a day that the Lord set aside to worship Him. Our God is worthy
to be worshipped in it. We come here to give Him thanks.
We come here to praise Him, to thank Him. to call upon Him. He's so worthy. We come here
to pray unto Him, ask Him for mercy, for grace, for wisdom,
for salvation for us and our children and others. We come
here to worship the Lamb that was slain. We come to worship. Verse 1 says that they should
come, all of them. He sent this out to everyone.
Everyone should come. It's our reasonable service,
isn't it? God, in whose hands our breath
is and all our ways, has given us all things richly to enjoy.
What do we have we have not received? Everything we are and have been
freely given us from our God in heaven, everything. Shouldn't we come and thank Him? All should. Every human being
should, shouldn't they? But they don't. Why do you? We're going to see this in a
moment. But here's the key why we should
come and what we do here. Look at verse 1. All should come,
that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem,
to keep the Passover. Did you notice that? Verse 2,
the king sent out the council, all the congregation, to keep
the Passover. Did you see that? To keep the
Passover. Verse 5, they should come, he
sent this decree, this proclamation, from Beersheba to Dan, that they
should keep the Passover. You see that? It says it a couple
more times. This was the king's command.
It wasn't good counsel. The counsel means they got together. But it wasn't advice. It was a command, wasn't it?
It was a decree. It was a proclamation sent out. Letters. Letters. You hold in
your hand A letter written by the hand of our God. Who is it
to? Well, all have heard, have they
not? Yeah, Paul said that in Romans
10. Have they not all heard? Verse
18. Barely the sound has gone throughout
the earth. But having ears to hear, most don't want to hear
this. Do you? Do you? So this is to you. The epistles
are letters to who? The church. And in the end, who
met together at Jerusalem were God's people. And they did it
with great joy and great gladness. And they had a feast and they
were so happy. And I hope we will leave this
place happy. These were letters written from
the king himself. This is God's Word. Do you believe
this is God's Word? No scriptures of any private
interpretation. Holy men, that is men chosen
by the Lord, spake as they were moved by the Spirit of God. Every
single prophet, God spoke to that man and said, this is My
Word. Write it down. Thank God we have
a book written. Blessed are they that read the
words of this book. Do you read it? Why? You know, we read things we enjoy,
don't we? I've been, thankfully, like to
read since I was a child and like to read many different things.
And then one day, by God's grace, He gave me a desire for this
book. I still read other books, but
I find myself going back and trying to read some of those
old books, some of those old classics that I used to read.
And I can't get through a chapter. It just, I'd lost interest. You know what? And boy, did you
read this? You read it with me just now.
Did that interest you? I like what Lincoln said one
time. He gave a comment. They asked him to give a commentary
on a book, a book review. He said, if you like this kind
of book, this is the kind of book you'll like. If you love the Word of God,
if you love God, this is the book. This is what you want to
read, isn't it? This gives you great joy, doesn't
it? You need to rejoice if it does.
Blessed are they that read our Lord said in Revelation 1. Blessed
are they that hear. How shall they hear without a
preacher? Do you understand everything you read? In Nehemiah 8, the people had
a gathering and they read the book from morning till evening. But there were some men, a whole
bunch of men, that stood up to give the sense of the reading.
They preached to give an understanding of what they read. And the people
just rejoiced because they understood. And a dear sister just wrote
me and said, I'm so thankful the Lord gives you an understanding
of Scripture. She said, because sometimes I
read it, it's like reading Chinese. Is it that way with you? Blessed are they that read. Blessed
are they that hear the words of this Book. And, boy, blessed
are they that lay hold of it. So, the king's command was to
come and keep the Passover. Now, we don't observe a Passover anymore. What is the Passover? What is
the Passover? Well, the Scripture says, in
1 Corinthians, that Christ is our Passover. The Passover was
in Exodus 12. when the children of Israel were
in bondage in Egypt. And they were in the houses,
and God sent word through a man, Moses, to tell every single person
in Israel, his chosen people, that every one of them had to
have a lamb. And that lamb was to be observed
by all the children of Israel, to be without spot, without blemish,
holy, perfect, pure. And they would take that lamb,
the elders, not the people, but the elders would take that lamb
and kill it, shed its blood. The soul that sinneth, God said,
shall surely die. Now either we will because of
our sin, or somebody will die in our place. That's substitution. That lamb represents a substitute. No lamb's blood can put away
sin. But there is a lamb that was
slain before the foundation of the world. Before the first sinner
sinned, Jesus Christ was the lamb slain, the substitute for
sinners, who would come to this earth. Live a holy, righteous,
without spot or blemish, perfect. Your lamb must be perfect, because God is holy. Yes, He
is. And that lamb, Jesus Christ,
would come to this earth, and by His holy and righteous life,
God would accept on His behalf all those people that came to
God by Him. But Christ had to die. Christ
had to pay for sin. He had to be made sin. And God
laid on Him the iniquity of all of God's people. Made Him to
be sin for God's people. Him who knew no sin. That we
might be made the righteousness of God in Him. And God accepted
what He did. We're accepted in the Beloved.
His people. That blood made remission for
our sin. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's
Son, cleanses that. It says these people were not sanctified.
These people were not cleansed. How were they cleansed? How were
they sanctified? Well, Lamb's blood can't do it.
Christ's blood does. See, it represents Christ. There
were some people who hadn't kept the Passover. There were people
who hadn't come there. There were preachers that weren't
sanctified. Well, how is anybody sanctified?
My one offering, Hebrews says, He has sanctified forever them
that belong to Him. Jesus Christ. Sanctification set apart, cleansed
by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you understand a little
bit of what I'm saying? All right, he said, the king
sent out these letters that all who heard this were to come to
Jerusalem. What was at Jerusalem? The temple,
the sanctuary. There was one place, there was
one place that they were all to come to keep this Passover,
okay? Before this, They were meeting
here and meeting there and doing whatever anybody felt like doing. You understand? It was a mess.
Religion in Israel was a mess. This fellow said, well, we can
do this, we can do that, we can do this. And our Lord said, no,
there's a place I've chosen to put my name there. That's where
you come and this is where you keep the
Passover. God has a true church. And there are many places, many
places, everywhere that pretend to be or seem to be the church
of God. How do you know? You've got to
come to the place God has chosen. Not the church of your choice.
The church that He's chosen. God said Jerusalem. The temple. The church is God's temple. How
do you know? Because one thing's going on
there, they're keeping the Passover. Are you with me? Anything else
is an abomination to God. Do you understand that? This is how you know. This is
how you know the true church of God and the true Levite are
preacher of God. He's preaching Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. How often? Every time. I don't care what it looks like.
I don't care how pleasing it is. If it's pleasing to the flesh,
it's not of God. If it's glorifying completely
to God, and what is God's chief glory? Christ crucified. This
is how you know. This is so relevant to right
now. They've elected a new pope. I didn't plan this, but this
is so relevant. Think of the absurdity of this.
Think of how foolish and ridiculous it is that millions all over
the world are waiting for some men in a room to elect a holy
father. He wasn't before, and then men
just got together and decided to elect Him. Now He's the Holy
Father. Now He can forgive sin. Now,
that's what they claim. Now He can impart heavenly favors
to whomever He will. There are millions of people
that do that, follow that. And Roman Catholicism, the mass, This is very needful in it at
this time. Who is your Holy Father? God
in heaven. Our Father which art in heaven.
Who? Philip said, Lord, show us the
Father. He said, I am. He that hath seen
me hath seen the Father. Mary is not our mother. No, no, no, no. So the true church
keeps the Passover. That is, they preach the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not a mere ordinance.
This is not a ceremony. We partake of the Lord's table.
That's not the Passover. That's not taking the Passover.
We don't keep the Passover. Christ, our Passover, was already
killed one time. What we keep doing is keep remembering
Him, keep preaching Him, keep declaring Him, keep lifting Him
up. There's some in here that are
not yet sanctified. Every time we meet, Sunday or
Wednesday, there's some in this room and other places that are
not yet clean. How are we cleansed? How are
sinners pardoned? Christ our Passover. You've got
to see Christ. You've got to keep preaching
Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. From the Garden of Eden, the
first two sinners that sinned against God, God took a lamb
right before their eyes and killed that lamb, that innocent creature,
shed its blood, and took the skin, stripped that lamb of its
covering to cover the nakedness of these two rebels against God.
And therefore, they're pardoned. Not only pardoned, they're covered.
Their nakedness, their sin, their guilt is covered. And God left
them a promise. Now the woman sees it's going
to come and bruise the serpent's head. And so they had to live
900 years. And they could come to God one
way. They now know. They come unto this holy God
one way, by the blood. Abel, in chapter 4, brought to
God the sacrifice of a lamb, saying, I'm a sinner against
the holy God. My only hope is a substitute
that died for my sin. And he came. Cain brought his
works. Cain brought flowers. Cain brought
fruit. Cain brought, I'm so sincere,
but there wasn't any blood in it. And God rejected Cain. No matter how pretty, no matter
how emotional, no matter how sincere, no matter how beautiful
it sounds, no matter how beautiful the choir, no matter how much
everybody's touched by anything in religion today, if there's
no blood in it, God's not in it. Do you understand? And God
doesn't accept it. And that which is highly esteemed
among men is an abomination to God. If Christ is not preached,
Christ is not in that place. Do you understand that? And it's not what you do with
Christ. It's what God did to Christ for His people. It's not
you accepting Jesus. That's not in the Bible. It's
God accepting Jesus Christ on your behalf. Do you know that?
Yes, you do. Yes, you do. We don't come here
for God to congratulate us and thank us for coming. We come
here to thank God for sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to die
for us worthless sinners. Every time. Every time. Isn't that right? Every time. Do you hear me? There are places,
there are few and far between, where God's name is, His glory,
His honor. The God of the Bible, the Jesus
Christ of Scripture, the true Lord Jesus Christ of Scripture,
Lord of Lords, Savior. He did it. He didn't try to do
it. He did it. Christ, the only Messiah, the
only substitute, the only covenant head, the only way, truth and
life. There are a few places, there are few and far between,
but there are places that God has chosen to put His name there.
And how you know is Jesus Christ is proclaimed every time. That's why we come. That's why
we come here. Shouldn't everybody? Sure should. Sure should. And verse 4 says
the thing pleased the king. It pleased the king. What pleases
God? And you know what the Scripture said?
That God is angry with the wicked every day. that the wrath of
God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness
of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness, religion especially,
the seed of Satan. Roman Catholicism and Southern
Baptist religion is right in bed with her. How do you know? They do things to bring people
in. They do this and do that to entice
people to come in. That's bribery. That's flattery. That's flesh. God's not in it. We do one thing. We send out
the proclamation. We send out the decree. We send
out the word. What are you all doing there?
Preaching Christ and Him crucified. Who's interested? I'll tell you
who's interested. Look at the last verse of chapter
29. You have it? 2 Chronicles 29,
verse 36. Hezekiah rejoiced, and so do
I, and all the people, that God had prepared the people for the
thing. What does it say? God did it.
Look down at verse 11. It says, Nevertheless, some,
different ones of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun, humbled themselves
and came to Jerusalem. Also in Judah, the hand of God
was to give them one heart to do one thing. If you do come here for this
reason and rejoice in Christ and Him crucified, God did it. Rejoice. God's chosen you. Right now in heaven, everybody's
with Him, called, chosen, and faithful. What are they doing?
Worshipping the Lamb. That's it. That's it. If you
get great joy in this now, you're going to be there then. And your
joy is going to be unspeakable, full of glory. You see any glory
in this? Any glory in Him? Look at it, just verse by verse,
real quickly. He sent the proclamation, verse
5, a decree, a proclamation, everywhere to keep the Passover.
Everybody heard. Because they hadn't done it,
verse 5, as it was written. Got to be according to Scripture,
doesn't it? We've got to worship God according to Scripture. We
need to conduct our services in such a way that Isaiah and
Jeremiah and Paul and Peter and James and John could come in
here and say, this is the way God's Word says to do it. This
is what's to be done. What is that? What did they do
back then? Praying. Calling on the Lord. Singing. Reading the Word of God and preaching. That's it. That's it. Right? I am just certain that if Paul
the Apostle walked in here and sat down, he'd be very comfortable
saying, this is worship. No flesh. Keep the passage as it was written.
Verse 6, the postman, I'm a postman, you know. I don't work for the
post office. Kevin does back there, but I'm
a postman. I'm a messenger. I've got these
letters from the king. And like other men, like David
and Todd and Gabe and other men, they're postmen. They're messengers
with a letter from the king, words of the king. And verse
6 says, you children of Israel. Here's the message. You children
of Israel, turn again unto the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. This is the true and living God.
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Turn again. Turn from yourself. Deny yourself.
Turn from your idols to serve the living God. Turn from the
world. Turn from religion. Turn from
sin. Turn. Turn. Come. Come. Again? Again. Yes, again. He keeps calling
us again. Psalm 80. Turn us again, O Lord
God of hosts, and cause Thy face to shine. That's the gospel.
Again. There have been some, now I came
here when I, not here, but I came to, and I heard the gospel when
I was a boy and it made an impression on me. It did. Now listen. And I made a profession of faith
when I was 12 years old. Okay? But it turned out not to
be real. Because I went out in the world
and went hog wild. I went after the world. Do you
know what the Lord did? He turned me again. He brought
me back. And I find myself sometimes still
being taken up with the world. Do you? Your thoughts? Your affection? Do you? Anybody? Anybody honest
besides me? All of us, don't we? The world
has such a pull. We live in it. How do you know
you're not of it? He turns you again. He calls Uganda out. Come out
from among them. He said, come, come. To whom
coming? Again and again and again. I heard the gospel when I was
young and it made an impression on me and I thought there was
conviction there and I did. I believed the truth in my head
anyway. But then turned to the world.
But God, bless His holy name, turned me from the world to Himself. And every time I look elsewhere
now, it turns me again. How? By the same gospel. And
I've been trying to do this for a long time now, preach. And
I've certainly heard a lot of preaching over the years. And
you know, I find myself still rejoicing in this same message.
I never tire of telling the same message, telling the same story. And I look into the faces of
some of you and you're still smiling after all these years.
You're still hearing this fumbling, bumbling fellow from Kentucky
and smiling and rejoicing in the same gospel. That's a good
sign. Good sign. Parenthood again. The remnant
of you that are escaped. A remnant that escaped. Escaped
what? The wrath come. Escape the world. Escape the tempter's snares.
And it says, look at verse 8, it says, don't be stiff-necked
like your father's were. Yield yourself. Submit yourself.
Humble yourself. You know, every knee will bow. The Philippians says every knee
should bow. Right now. And every tongue confess. Everyone should come and worship
God. He gives everything to everyone.
Your children, God gave them to you. Your health, God gave
it to you. Your homes, your jobs, the food
you eat, the clothes you wear, God gave it to you. You should
come. You should worship God. You should thank Him. Okay? Everything. Everyone should. Every knee should
bow. Every tongue should confess,
Thou art God, beside Thee is my name. Every tongue should.
You know, they don't. Look down in verse 10. It says these preachers went
everywhere, but some of them laughed them to scorn and mocked them. Laughed. They laughed at God. And they mocked. There ain't
nothing to it. Simon Peter said in 2 Peter 3,
in the last days, scoffers shall come. Mockers. Where's the promise
of His coming? There ain't nothing to it. This
is not real. Look, it's 2025. He hasn't come
back yet. Oh, it's a bunch of hogwash.
It's just an old religious Jewish fable. And a bunch of old wives'
fables. And you've got to be ignorant
to believe this stuff. God is not mocked. In fact, Proverbs 1 says it's
coming a day when some will call. And he said, and I'm going to
mock. Didn't it? People are not interested in
God who gave them everything. People who are not interested,
don't give it thanks, not interested in Jesus Christ. People who don't
come to worship God are saying, I don't owe God any thanks. Everything I am and have, I've
done it myself. I didn't get it from God. I don't
care if Jesus Christ came, lived, died. It doesn't matter to me. I'm not going to go worship.
I'm not interested. So God says in the end. Bind him. I'm not interested
in him. I'm not going to feed. It's over. Done with you. Cast him in an outer duct. There'll
be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Calling on God. And
he said, I'm not going to hear him. I'm not going to hear him.
God's not mocked. God is not mocked. We mock God. People mock God and laugh at
God. God's going to have the last laugh. That's awful, isn't
it? Humble yourself. Come down. Right now. Confess Him. Right now. Or He'll deny you
before God, before the angels. Well, nevertheless, there's that
verse Tammy Jo, there's that verse, that nevertheless, that
word. Isn't that wonderful? Nevertheless, some of them, different
ones from different places, from Manassas to Zebulon, from New
York to Florida, different ones humbled themselves. God humbled
them through the preaching of the Gospel. God gave one heart
to do that. To do what? Come worship Christ.
Aren't you glad? So let me go on down here to
verse 18. Didn't you love this prayer?
So Hezekiah prayed, and here's what he said. The good Lord,
the last part of verse 18, the good Lord pardoned everyone that prepares his heart to seek
God, the Lord God of his Father. Though he be not cleansed, though
he be a sinner through and through, a leper, the Lord pardon you. And what happened? Verse 20,
the Lord hearken, our God has heard the prayer
of our Lord Jesus Christ in the garden and on the cross, didn't
He? Father, forgive them. Those were
the words that broke this young 22-year-old rebel against me. Those were the words. Christ
for the cross said, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're
doing. They don't know what they're
doing. Broke my heart, baby. And then
I said, by His grace, Father forgive me, I didn't know what
I was doing. I do now. I do now. And the Lord healed them. Healed them. Oh boy. Children of Israel, they did
this, verse 21, with great gladness. The worship of God. became a
drudgery to me as a young teenager, but now it's great gladness. Praising and singing with loud
instruments. I used to play loud instruments.
That's what's partly wrong with my hearing. Loud instruments. But I do believe now that God
made me pick up a guitar when I was 12 years old for one reason. So I can stand up here and sing
unto my Lord who loved me and gave Himself for me. That's it. I wasted all that time. He's redeemed me. Great gladness. Hezekiah spoke
to the heart, verse 22. And they made confession, verse
23. And the council said, let's do
this seven more days. Seven more days. This happened
throughout the Scriptures. They'd go preaching. The apostles
would go preaching. And the people, most of the people would reject
them and want to run them out of town. But some of the people
would say, look, can we do this again next Sunday? And they did
it with gladness. And look, Hezekiah gave thought. There's enough gospel to go around.
There's forgiveness. There's mercy. There's grace.
Plenteous. with Him is plenteous redemption. You reckon there's enough mercy
for me? Huh? Oh yeah. And all the congregation,
verse 26, there's great joy in Jerusalem in the church. What are we joy in? A lot of
people enjoy religion, don't they? A lot of people get great
joy out here in the choir. If you ask them if they go to
church, they'll say yes. And what did you hear today?
Oh, we heard a message on... Oh, you should have heard the
choir. What did they sing? I don't remember,
but they sounded so good. When you leave this place, can
you tell somebody what you heard? If you've rejoiced and enjoyed
this, I'm preaching Christ. Because here's the true worshippers,
the true concision of Philippians 3, 3. Worship God in the Spirit. They don't need all this stuff.
They worship God from the heart, by the Spirit of God, and rejoice
in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And no confidence in the flesh.
No flesh. Get it out of here. No flesh. So there was great joy. And it
said in verse 27 that their prayer, their singing, everything they
did was heard all the way to heaven. And it pleased God. Let me read
this to you. What pleases God? His Son. His Son. He said out loud. God
said out loud, this is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye Him. People everywhere hear anything
but Him. But not God's people. They've heard His voice. His
sheep have heard His voice. And they worship Him. Come to
Him. Come to Him. And God is well
pleased for His righteousness sake. Now listen to this. Let
us go, therefore, unto him without the camp, outside of mainstream
religion. Bearing his reproach, we have
no continuing city here, but we seek one to come. By him,
therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually,
that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. To
do good and communicate, forget not. But with such sacrifices,
praise, thanksgiving, support of the gospel, hearing the gospel,
preaching the gospel, God is well pleased. Well pleased. That's it.