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Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida. Clearly declaring the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can reach us toll free at 1-800-800-800-800-800. visit us at the website at www.BibleLineMinistries.org. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

So you know, we have all of this terrorism going on. We have wars, we have these gangs down in Mexico that are waging wars against America. It’s not being reported. But there are ranchers, if you do any research and you look down at the border of what’s going on there, they’re at war. They are at war. These Mexican drug lords are coming in and they are terrorizing and killing the people in all of those areas so that they can get their trafficking, sex trafficking back and for drug trafficking back and forth.

We’re in the same situation that Hezekiah was in. We have a culture that does not fear God anymore. Their culture did not fear God. Why? Well, because as soon as the threats came in, what was the first thing they ran to? They ran to the idols of the things. And our society, when we look of the threats that are coming in, what do we look towards? Do we look towards the Lord? No. Think about our politicians right now. How many of them have stood up and said, listen, gay marriage is wrong because it’s sin.

Have you heard any politician say that? No. But, you know, there should be an overwhelming sense to go towards the source of the problem and recognize because we were founded on godly principles, we’ve moved away from them, and so Hezekiah says, nope, this is what we’re going to do, this is how we’re going to do it and notice that the rulers and the leaders of the people did not want to do this but he made them do it anyway because he knew what the right thing to do was.

So he went through and he says listen he says first thing we got to do is you priests you’ve not been doing what God has commanded you to do. Now we don’t know the mindset of them did they just follow along with the king because they were afraid that they not stand up you know we could speculate back and forth on what their motivation was. But the bottom line is when we read we see that Hezekiah said, nope, he gave a command to the priests.

He said, listen, you go in there, you clean out the temple. He says, you take off those things that have been locked up, you open it up, you clean it out, you clean yourselves out. And that’s precisely what he did. And so he had this whole process. He knew about the law. He knew that the priests could not in whatever rebellious stage they were present themselves before the Lord they had to be sanctified. Sanctified, we do that to ourselves.

We cleanse ourselves by confessing our sins to the Lord and by looking for ways to stop doing those things. It’s not just simply the confession and we go out and continue to do the things. We look for changes and we try to make changes in our life after we confess them. And that’s a way of sanctifying ourselves. When before we take the Lord’s Supper we are to be introspective and look can see and go to Lord. That’s a way of sanctifying ourselves.

So Hezekiah being the king knew that the Levites in the temple were not clean. Then he knew that the temple was not clean. So he tells them, gives them a command, go through, clean everything up, and he goes ahead and does that. Interestingly, in the process of doing this, in the time that it takes to get done, it’s also around the time period that it was Passover. Passover was to be celebrated by God’s decree in the first month. But by the time they got done with all of the consecrating of all of the utensils, cleaning up all the instruments that was in the temple, cleaning themselves up, doing all of these things, tearing down all the idols, all the false things, it had gone past the first month and they were into the second month.

So, you know, some people might have looked at this and thought, well, okay, you know, God said that we’re to do it on this day and since we’ve already passed it, well, we’ll just look forward to doing it next year. But that’s not what Hezekiah did. And again, I think it goes back to the very thing talking about what was in his heart. What was in his heart? He said, you know what? No matter what, I think the purpose of the Passover is for a remembrance.

And because we have not had a Passover celebration in so long, we’re going to do it. And I think to my mind about other occasions where things that were set aside according to the orders of the temple, certain things that God overlooked because there was a right motivation behind it. Anybody think of one right off the bat? Maybe David? Remember when David was running from Saul and he was hungry? And he went to the priest and he said, listen, we’re hungry.

You’ve got five loaves, whatever you got in there, can I have it? And the priest looks at him and says, well, these are hollowed bread. This has been sanctified, set apart. This is for the temple. This is the shoe bread that goes to the Lord. And yet, because he was hungry, because there was a need, the priest said, okay, here you go and gave it to David. It’s interesting, again, the Lord uses that precise example. When talking to the Pharisees later on about their desire to be so meticulous about following every jot and tittle of the law, even though they’re missing the whole point, and not really understanding the spirit of it behind it.

And so in the same way, God honors Hezekiah, who says, listen, this is for a remembrance of us. What our nation needs now is to remember God who brought them there, that God is the one that took them out of Egypt, brought them into the Promised Land, and He did it by blood, and He did it through all of these things. That’s what the Passover was for. And so Hezekiah, being the godly leader that he is, against all of the friction that he’s getting from all of it.

He declares, you know what, I know it’s a month later, but we’re going to have the Passover celebration. And so in a way to reunite some of the tribes in the north, he sends out some letters. And he sends these letters out, he sends them to Ephraim, he sends them to Manasseh, he sends them out to several tribes out there and says, listen, we need to get back to this. Even though, yes, we’re split into a different kingdom, there’s no reason why we can’t come back and get back together.

And so he drafts some letters and he has people send them out. And sadly we read, let’s look at 2 Chronicles chapter 30, and let’s look at verses 1 through 10. In Hezekiah sent to all Israel and to Judah and wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasseh that they should come to the house of the Lord of Jerusalem to keep the Passover unto the Lord God of Israel. And the king had taken counsel in his princes and all the congregation of Jerusalem to keep the Passover in the second month.

they could not keep it at that time because the priests had not sanctified themselves sufficiently. Neither had the people gathered themselves together in Jerusalem. And the thing pleased the king and the congregation so they established a decree and made proclamation throughout all Israel from Beersheba to Dan. That’s from one end to the other all the way there to make proclamation. And in verse 6, so the post went with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel and Judah, and according to the commandment of the king, saying, ye children of Israel, turn again into the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.

And he will return to the remnant of you that you are escaped out of the hands of the king of Assyria. And he says, be not like your fathers and like your brethren, which trespass against the Lord. And in verse 9, for if you turn again to the Lord, your brethren and your children shall find compassion before them. And so in verse 10, we see what the results are. So the posts pass from city to city throughout the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, even unto Zebulun, but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them.

Many of the other tribes that were there, they laughed. How discouraging for this young King trying to do the right thing in an absolutely corrupt area, but it didn’t discourage him. It didn’t discourage him. He kept faithful. He did all these things. And they went forward with the Passover and I want you to skip down to verse 18. And Hezekiah, rather than being bitter towards all of these other people, all of these other tribes is brethren. He does something amazing, something that we’re commanded to do.

He says, for the multitude of people, even many of Ephraim and Manasseh and Hisa’kah and Zebulun had not cleans themselves, yet they did eat the Passover otherwise when it was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, the good Lord pardon everyone. You see, even though those letters went out into the different tribes and there were different rulers and there were different leaders out there that laughed at it, some of the people that knew about them said, nope, let’s go to Jerusalem because we want to follow with the Lord once.

We want to do these things and they hadn’t cleaned themselves. They hadn’t sanctified themselves. But Hezekiah being the godly king, recognizing these people were coming there with the right heart, the right intention, the right motive, praise God, even though they’re not sanctified, they’re not cleansed except what their offerings are. And God honored that. He absolutely did. Look at verse 19, that prepare his heart to seek God. He’s talking about those that came. The Lord God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary and the Lord God hearkened to Hezekiah and healed the people.

So Hezekiah has a great start. He’s got some great reforms in. He’s got some followings coming on. He’s got some people behind him and now he faces a major, major test. He has Sinacarab who was coming and let’s go to chapter 32 and let’s look at verse one through four. After these things and the establishment thereof, Sinacarab, king of Assyria, came and entered into Judah and encamped against the fence cities and thought to win for himself. And when Hezekiah saw that Sinacherab was come, and that he was purposed to fight against Jerusalem, he took counsel with his princes, his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains that were without the city, and they did help him.

So there was gathered much people together who stopped all the fountains and the brooks that ran through the midst of the land saying, why should the kings of Assyria come and find much water? So it was a little bit of strategy. Now just a little background from the Assyrians, When I say the Assyrians, a major city in there is Nineveh, of course, what major profit do we think about? Jonah, right, of course. And of course Jonah went to whoever the king was at that time, I don’t remember, and talked with them and told them, listen, this is what God is going to do.

Now Assyria just wasn’t a separate country to the side just going about their own business. Assyria actually had history records that they had schools of terrorism. So if you wanted to learn how to do warfare, you had a school that you could send people to that could learn these things that could expand the Assyrian Empire. So they had schools of terrorism. They learned how to torture people. This is why Jonah was so resistant to go and preach into Nineveh.

First of all, he thought maybe they would probably kill them, but second of all, they would send these groups into certain areas of northern Israel and they would kill all the women and children and men and sometimes by skinning them alive. They would literally skin them alive. So Assyria, not a good place. Very, very scary thing to have Sinacarab, the king of Assyria, and camped outside of your walls because they did absolutely horrible and wicked things. And one of the main things of terrorism is the psychological aspect of the fear that comes along with it.

And when you talk about ISIS or Hezbollah or any of those, and you hear them talk, they know that. They know that the reason why they put beheadings and all of these different things on the videos or whatever and send them out is because they know that that instills fear and that’s part of the terrorism behind that. So Assyria, horrible, horrible place and here they are looking at coming in and Sinakarab makes this unbelievable statements and he writes it down and he starts talking in front of the walls and so everybody of Israel or everybody of Judah behind the walls protected there, Hezekiah with them, looking and listening to this man talking about how, guess what?

I’ve gone into this country and I’ve overtaken that one and you know it and they did, they knew all the history. Did their God save them? No. And I’ve gone into this country and this nation and I’ve overtaken them and I’ve taken them. Did their God save them? No. And so, sonakrib in front of all of Israel, all of the people there, he starts in front of the, when I say Israel, I mean Judah, the Jews behind the wall, continues and now he says, do you really think that your God is going to be strong enough to stop me?

None of the other ones have. Then he even talks about Hezekiah and says, listen, don’t you listen to Hezekiah? He’s leading you wrong. He’s trusting in that God and that God is not going to save you. Wow. So what does Hezekiah do? What does Hezekiah do? Well Hezekiah prays. He gets with the prophet Isaiah. Yes the prophet Isaiah that wrote the letters there and he begins to pray and let’s find where his prayer is. Second chronicles 32, 6 through 8.

Oh where he got there that one. Oh here we go. Let’s go to 2nd Kings, 2nd Kings that’s right. I have so many things highlighted on here. I lost my spot. 2nd Kings chapter 19. And let’s look at verses 14 through 19. So Hezekiah takes these letters that Sennacherib had written with all the threats that are on there and he lays them down.

And he prays, and Hezekiah received the letter of the hand of the messengers and read it. In Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said, O Lord God of Israel, which dwelt between the cherubim, Thou art the God, even thou alone of all the kingdoms of the earth. Thou hast made heaven and earth, Lord, bow down thine ear and hear. Open, Lord, thine eyes and see and hear the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent him to reproach the living God.

of a truth, Lord, the king of Assyrians have destroyed the nations in their lands and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, therefore they have destroyed them. Now therefore, O Lord our God, I beseech thee, save us out of his hand, that all the kings of the earth may know that thou art God even thou only.” Wow, what a a leader. Could you imagine the president of the United States getting up and in a state of the union address, pray that?

Could you imagine that? What an awesome thing that I think I would fall in front of the TV crying and weeping for joy to say that we have a godly leader. My gosh, what a wonderful thing it was. And so God putting Hezekiah to the test and Hezekiah passes the test, he prays to the Lord and Isaiah says, listen, God’s got this all wrapped up. Don’t you worry about it. And of course as we read in the story, that night, sennacherum, outside the walls, goes to sleep at night and an angel of the Lord goes through the camp and slays a hundred and what, sixty five thousand?

One hundred How many was it? 185? I don’t remember. Whether it was one or whether it was a billion, unbelievable. So Sennacherib gets up in the morning and is like, all right, where’s my coffee? We got a war to win. Hello? Where is everybody? Everybody’s dead. Sennacherib was alive and you better believe it the whole world knew and heard about what happened. Sinacra, we find out, goes back to Nineveh and he starts offering some offerings before sacrifices before his false God and somebody from the Babylonian Empire comes in and wacks him.

You know, that kind of history repeats itself throughout history. Every time a ruler somewhere in history defies God or makes himself to be God over Jehovah, guess what happens to him? takes them out. It happens that way. When we read history, we see that over and over again. So all of a sudden now the victory is there. Hezekiah’s faith in God is exemplary to everybody that is there in Judah and Israel and they look and they say, wow, this is the right thing to do.

None of the other practices that we had done under A has worked, but look now. Hezekiah leading us to with the Lord, and that works really well. So now we find a turning point. If we look at 2 Kings, 2 Kings chapter 20. We see a turning point that is about to happen in Hezekiah’s life. And in verses 1 through 11 it says, and in those days was Hezekiah sick unto death and the prophet Isaiah, the son of Amos, came to him and sent unto him, thus saith the Lord, set thy house in order for thou shalt die and not live.

Wow! Here he is, he had this great victory, everything, everything’s riding high, the kingdom is serving the Lord, everything is in the right spot, doing the right things, the right things and what do you mean I have to die? Wait, what? No, wait, you mean I have to die? Now, you know, it’s hard to go into his heart and see what’s in his mind. Was he afraid to die? It’s just the fear of dying? I think as we read a little bit further, we find out that that’s not the case because all of a sudden we see that he started to get some accolades.

He started to get some. Remember, what was his prayer? Wipe out, keep us safe from Sennacherib in the king of Assyria so that the whole world will know that the God of Israel is the only God. Well, guess what? That happened. Because we read later on, we find out that all of those other nations realizing, wait a minute, what? 185,000 of the army He just dead and it wasn’t because the armies of Israel went out and attacked. Their God did this because there was no other explanation.

There were no battles. They were just dead. Whoa, that’s the God. So we better remember what a day has to do when he felt threatened about an invading army. He sent things. He gave sacrifices to appease their gods. So guess what? nations afraid now, uh-oh, we better send some things to appease the God of Hezekiah. And so they did. They sent wonderful things to Him, all these different things. But this of course is after Hezekiah being afraid that He was going to die, praise, and says, Lord, I don’t want to die.

I don’t want to die. I want more days that I can have more of these glories for you. I mean, look what we did. Look what we did. I mean, look how the world knows all about you right now. We can do more. I can praise you more. And I can’t praise you more if I’m dead in the grave. That was his prayer. And no sooner had Isaiah walked out the door telling him to get his house in order that he was going to die.

He turned right back around and said, all right, Lord, I heard your prayer. You’re going to give you 15 years. An interesting thing, you know, we’ve kind of speculated how did time move, but it says, Hezekiah says, I need a sign, you know, show He told me something. Me, apparently him getting better from his illness wasn’t a sufficient sign. He wanted something more than that. He says, listen on He has dial, I want you to send the shadow back 10 degrees.

He says any, if it goes forward 10 degrees, that’s not a big deal. But if you can make it go backwards, so the dial is a sundial and so he’s talking about time going back 10 degrees. Now how’d that work out? did God actually take the planet and reverse it? We all know, but it’s interesting to think about, or is it just, you know, who knows how he did that? But that was the sign and it went there and sure enough, his Akai got better.

And as I said, now all these countries were coming and they were giving him all kinds of wealth, giving him all kinds of things. And here we’re gonna see where there was a problem. Second Chronicles, chapter 32, second Chronicles 32. Let’s look at verse 25, but Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him, for his heart was lifted up. A very big difference between the heart that he had when he first started and the heart that he has now.

The heart he had before was wholly towards the Lord. And now the heart he has is looking at and saying, boy, look at all the good things that I have. Look at all the things that I have done with the Lord. started to put himself in the picture where it was God that was totally in the picture before. Verse 25 and continuing, therefore there was the wrath upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem. Notwithstanding Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, he recognized it but he still was lifted up and as we read a little bit further, we find out in verse 31, how be it in the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon who sent unto him to inquire of the wonder that was done before the land, God left him to try him that he might know what was

in his heart. Again, this is all tied________________________ what was in Hezekiah’s heart. Early on from the very beginning, serving God, trusting in Him solely, even in the face of all great adversity, that was within His heart. But then when He got the victory, all of a sudden now look how His heart changed. His heart starts to look at Himself to the point that God says, okay, I’m going to see what happens. I’m going to see what happens to you.

And so if we were to go back to 2 Kings, we don’t have time to go back there, we would see the verbiage that He uses when He talks to the people. these princes of Babylon when the Prophet comes up to him and says, what did you show him? He says, well, I showed him everything that I have, everything that was in my house, all the things that I have. And of course the Prophet tells him, well, you’ve done very foolishly because that’s how this land is going to be destroyed.

Also in the 15 years that he lived after this illness that he promised he needed more time in order to serve God, he also had a son. And the son’s name is Manasseh, who ends up being one of the most wicked kings of Judah to ever exist. As wicked as they have was in the King of Israel, Manasseh was that and more. It was very, very sad. And you would think to talk to Hezekiah and say, do you think maybe it might have been better?

Had God just taken you home right then? Instead of asking for those extra 15 years, I think he would probably say yes. But we see very clearly different stages of Hezekiah’s life that we can apply to ourselves in a doll based around his heart. Where is his heart? See sometimes when we serve God we might not have the right ways about going about the things, but God looks at our heart and the God says listen if I have somebody that has the right heart I can fix all of the things of the procedures, the things that are going there.

Why? Because I have their heart. They’re paying attention to me. If people are looking at all the things to make their heart right, guess what we call that? We call that legalism. You see? And that’s where the Pharisees had gone to. They had looked at all of these things as a way to try to make them spiritual, but the thing was they needed to have their heart right with God. And oftentimes in our lives when we have a great victory, where maybe we’ve been facing some kind of trial or some kind of circumstance that has really beset us and we’ve been faithful to trust in God and God gets us through it.

Guess what? That’s the most vulnerable time in our life. When we’ve had the greatest victory, we’re not looking as sharply to what the enemy is trying to set up to do. And in the same way that Hezekiah was glorious in the victory that was done there, he led himself be vulnerable by not assessing and looking and saying, wait a minute, the devil like a roaring lion is out to attack him. And he did. So that is Hezekiah. We can absolutely apply those things to our life.

Let’s pray. Father, thank you again for these stories and thank you for Hezekiah and his love for you and his devotion to you and help us Lord to have the right motive and the right love in Jesus’ name and great. Amen. Hello, this is Peter Amato with Bibleline, and we hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We’re so thankful your support of Bibleline, and we would like to offer you a free gift. During this month, for a gift in any amount, we’re going to send you Dr.

Arnold’s teaching series on the book of Colossians. Paul writes to a concerned pastor about false teachings that are entering his church. Some were teaching that one could find additional and greater knowledge outside of Jesus Christ, which is not true. All teachers that Christ is the head and we are complete in Him. This teaching series is certain to help you in your spiritual growth. So email, call or write to us today to receive your CD series on the book of Colossians.

Our mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. And don’t forget to include your mailing address as well. God bless you and thank you again for supporting Bibleline. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline. If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. And now, a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound, and we will be changed.

Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day. Believing that the Lord is coming soon just keep looking up