Effects of Passover
As the
festival of Passover comes to an end, we see a very powerful testimony. All of the people who are gathered and who
experience God in their lives go back out into Judah and remove the poles and
altars that have been set up to Asherah and the other false gods. The people are cut to the heart. They experience a genuine repentance.
Again,
let’s remember what made the experience great.
It wasn’t that Hezekiah was a skilled leader – this was in his first
year of being a king! It wasn’t that the
Levites had incredible practice at what they were doing – the Passover had been
neglected and not held as often as it should!
It is not the skill and the artistry that make this event great.
What made
the Passover great was that the people came before the Lord and laid their sins
before Him. They came to the Lord in
honest confession and humbled themselves before Him. What made this Passover great was the
humbleness with which the people came before the Lord. Because the people came with contrition on
their hearts, God moved among them in mighty ways. It is God moving through their broken hearts
that is powerful, not the skill and majesty of the celebration.
Restoration of the Worship
As
Hezekiah sees that the people are changed, he reestablishes the worship in the
temple. He appoints the priests and the
Levites to do the jobs that they were supposed to do. He makes sure that the priests and the
Levites understand all of the sacrifices that they were supposed to make in
obedience to the Lord.
Of
course, I can’t help but pause here for a second and ask how they got to this
point. After all, they are God’s
people. They had God’s Word. They had priests who were supposed to keep
them accountable. They had prophets who
were supposed to keep the people accountable.
How is it that the duties of the temple ever stopped in the first place?
The
answer, I believe, lies in the human heart.
It is difficult for us to continue to do things and not have them become
rote practice. As human beings we are
always looking for the new things. We
are always looking for the excitement.
We are quick to give up on things when they lose meaning and we lose
interest. Human beings are slaves to
many things, but most of us are not good slaves to obedience. We are slaves to our own will.
As the
kings fell away from God, the temple leaders fell away, too. As the people fell away, it made it easy for
the kings to stay away. As the temple
leaders fell away, it made it easier for the people to fall away, too. What we can see is a general failure of
leadership and people alike. It is hard
to establish genuine spiritual practice for any great length of time. As human beings, we truthfully just don’t
have what it takes most of the time. I
give credit to those reformers among us like Hezekiah who have what it takes to
move the people back into relationship with God.
As we
turn back to the chapter at hand, notice that once the temple practices have
been reassigned then Hezekiah sends out a decree for sacrifices to be brought
to Jerusalem. Also notice that Hezekiah
is one of the chief contributors to the sacrificial system. It is out of his own herds that Hezekiah
brings the burnt offering sacrifices for atonement. Hezekiah is not just a reformer; he is a part
of the movement himself.
God is
good as His Spirit continues to move among the people. The people receive the news of the
sacrificial system with joy. They bring
the first fruits of the harvest to Jerusalem.
Soon it becomes clear that there is a surplus among the people. The temple begins to have more than it needs
and piles begin to form.
Let’s
step back again for just a second.
Remember what we said yesterday about the reason Hezekiah offered for
all Hebrew people to come and celebrate the Passover. The Assyrians had just come through and
plundered the land. Hezekiah was merely
attempting to gather the poor souls who had been left behind after
Tiglath-pileser III gathered up everyone he could find and bring them home as
slaves. It was into that mindset that Hezekiah
calls for the Passover. Now – after becoming
obedient to God – they find themselves living in abundance! They should have been living in poverty as
their wealth and neighbors were stripped from them. But they find themselves living in abundance
because they turned to the Lord.
Continued Faithfulness
As we
close this chapter we see that Hezekiah is inspired by the faithfulness of the
people. He continues to seek the
Lord. He continues to follow in the ways
of the Lord. Yes, he is not perfect and
we will see that tomorrow. But for today
it is enough to see how the faithfulness of the people continues to inspire
faithfulness in Hezekiah. As we saw in
Hezekiah’s account in Kings, here we do have one of the great reformers. It is great to see how God is at work within
the people simply because they come to Him broken and repentant and ready to
start over again.
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