[ Silence ]
>> Oh, I'm walking into a concert. Oh, I'm walking into a casino. Oh, I'm walking into a piano bar or something.
You know, the point is that when you come to church, it should feel different.
And yet people have this, "Oh, you know, this is church for people who don't like church."
You'll see these advertisements all the time.
We do things a little different around here.
And of course, they're actually a carbon copy of like 10,000 other churches that are also doing things a little different.
Which basically just means be just like the world and be super worldly.
And so here's the thing.
If you walk in and maybe everything feels a little different, the vibe is a little different, good.
It should feel different. It shouldn't just walk in, "Oh, man, this is just like the bar.
It's just like cheers or something, you know, and it's just like, "Oh, I just feel so comfortable here."
Like, look, you should feel comfortable here, but in a different way.
And yeah, there is a great vibe here and people are friendly and talking and having a good time.
But it also feels different than being at a worldly institution because it is different.
Because it's set apart.
It's sanctified. It's peculiar to the Lord and His work.
That's what holiness literally means.
It means different, set apart, not just common, profane, average, just like everything else.
And so it says in verse 6, "For our fathers have trespassed and done that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord our God,
and have forsaken Him, and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord, and turned their backs.
They have shut up the doors of the porch and put out the lamps, and have not burned incense,
nor offered burnt offerings in the holy place unto the God of Israel.
Wherefore, the wrath of the Lord was upon Judah and Jerusalem,
and he hath delivered them to trouble, to astonishment, and to hissing, as you see with your eyes."
And you know what jumps out at me when I read these verses is that he's giving this list of things that aren't happening.
He's saying, "Look man, for the last 16 years our fathers have trespassed, and there was a bad generation there.
And they didn't open the doors to the house of God, they're not burning incense, they're not doing animal sacrifices.
And because they're not doing these things, God's mad, God's angry, God's wrath has been upon Judah.
And all these bad things are happening."
Now notice in these particular verses he's not specifically bringing up, "Hey, it's filled with murder and adultery and stealing."
What is it that's making God mad in this particular passage is God's not being served.
So here's the thing, we have other scriptures where God's wrath is manifest because of theft and murder and adultery.
Obviously those things do anger the Lord, and for those things sake the wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience.
But you know, it also just makes God mad when people are just ignoring him.
When God's people are just ignoring him, that also makes God mad.
So let's say you're going through life and you're not going to church, not reading your Bible, not praying.
But you're like, "Yeah, but I'm living a pretty clean life and I'm not really hurting anybody.
I'm not stealing, I'm not killing, I'm not committing adultery, I'm living a pretty clean life."
Well God's just mad at you because you don't go to church.
You didn't open the doors of the house of God.
You didn't pray.
You didn't read your Bible.
You didn't sing praises to God.
You know, God doesn't just want us to abstain from sin, although he does want us to clean up our lives in that way.
He also wants us serving him, acknowledging him.
We need to every day be showing thanks to him, praising him, giving glory to him.
And we need to be serving God with our lives.
What did Jesus say?
He said, "If you're not gathering with me, you're scattering."
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
You can just kind of not do nothing to nobody.
But guess what?
God's just mad if you're a do-nothing Christian too because he wants your butt in gear serving him, accomplishing something for God.
And so that's why God's mad.
They're not doing that stuff.
And then he brings up some of the consequences in verse 9.
"For lo, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this.
Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel that his fierce wrath may turn away from us."
So he said, "Look, I want to figure out a way to placate the Lord here so that the Lord will actually not be mad at us anymore."
Like we need to figure out what he wants us to do to make this right.
And here's the thing.
If you're ever in a situation where God's upset with you, where you've offended God, you need to figure out how to make that right.
I mean, that should be like, OK, I need to figure out how to get God pleased with me again.
I need to get under God's blessing once again.
And so he says that's what's in his heart.
Verse 11, "My sons, be not now negligent, for the Lord has chosen you to stand before him, to serve him, and that you should minister unto him and burn incense."
And then, you know, we go through all these names, the Levites of Rose, Mahath, the Son of Amazigh.
We already read those at the beginning of the sermon.
We'll skip over that.
But it says in verse number 15, "They gathered their brethren and sanctified themselves and came according to the commandment of the king
by the words of the Lord to cleanse the house of the Lord."
And the priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the Lord,
into the court of the house of the Lord.
And the Levites took it and carried it out to carry it out abroad into the Burkhaidron.
So there's like a two-step process.
The priests, because, you know, the Levites aren't really supposed to go in certain, like, really holy parts of the house of God.
So the priests go into those really holy parts and they move all the junk that's in there that shouldn't be in there,
the uncleanness and the filthiness, and they put that stuff in the courtyard where the Levites are allowed to go.
And then the Levites take it from there to the Burkhaidron to basically, you know, throw it in the trash.
You know, I don't know if, you know, this is the best way to do it environmentally.
But, you know, I don't really know how biodegradable this stuff was or wasn't.
But the point is, though, that what do you think they're getting rid of?
Like, stop and think about this.
Like, what is it that they're getting rid of when he says, you know, uncleanness in the holy place or the filthiness?
You know, we're not talking about a food mess or something.
You know, it's not like a bunch of rotten food or dead bodies or something.
What we're talking about is most likely idolatry, right?
And so we're talking about statues or images, paintings, drawings of things that are, you know, possibly obscene.
Because if you look at a lot of this religious artwork, you know, some of it gets pretty weird and obscene.
Or it could just be considered unclean and filthy because it's idolatrous, period, you know.
And so they're taking all this junk and they're getting it out and throwing it in the trash.
They're throwing it in the Burkhaidron as a way of like flushing it down the toilet in a sense.
It says in verse 17, "They began on the first day of the first month to sanctify.
And on the eighth day of the month came they to the porch of the Lord.
So they sanctified the house of the Lord in eight days.
And on the sixteenth day of the first month they made an end."
I mean, this is all happening really fast.
Usually when you read about stuff in the Bible like this, it usually takes longer than this.
But I mean, he's just like, "Alright, first month, let's go. Let's do it."
It takes eight days to get all the ungodly stuff out of the house of God.
And they get it all taken care of. Then they start offering sacrifices to the Lord.
The next many verses are, you know, talking about burnt sacrifices and just killing a multitude of offerings.
Trying to make up for lost time, you know, because they haven't been serving God.
They haven't been doing the sacrifices.
So now they're just doing beaucoup sacrifices in order to sort of make up for lost time.
And you know, by the way, that's not a bad idea.
Maybe if you haven't been reading your Bible, maybe it's time for like a Bible reading marathon for you.
Maybe if you've been out of soul winning for a long time, maybe it's time for you to do like a soul winning marathon.
And do like some extra soul winning and make up for lost time.
And jump start yourself going into 2025 on Bible reading, prayer, whatever it is you've been delinquent in.
Do a little extra, you know, and get yourself jump started into that lifestyle once again.
And so we see them doing like extra burnt offerings and things like that.
And it says in verse number 26, "The Levites stood with the instruments of David and the priests with the trumpets.
And Hezekiah commanded to offer the burnt offering upon the altar.
And when the burnt offering began, the song of the Lord began also with the trumpets and with the instruments
ordained by David, king of Israel, and all the congregation worshiped.
And the singers sang and the trumpeters sounded.
And all this continued until the burnt offering was finished."
Right? So they're singing praises to God.
They're playing with all their might.
They're singing out loudly praises to God.
Verse 30, "Moreover, Hezekiah the king and the princes commanded the Levites to sing praise unto the Lord
with the words of David and of Asaph the seer."
So these are the words that we find in the book of Psalms, right?
So they're singing the literal Psalms of the biblical book of Psalms.
Some of those will be labeled as a Psalm of Asaph, a Psalm of David, etc.
Obviously there are a whole bunch of authors that contributed to that.
And much of the book of Psalms is even from after the Babylonian captivity.
It even talks about the Babylonian captivity.
So that's a work in progress that was written over the course of centuries.
And then the Bible says in verse 31, "Then Hezekiah answered and said,
'Now you have consecrated yourselves unto the Lord.'"
And this is a word that's similar to sanctified.
Consecrate is similar.
You can see the secrate, kind of that sacred kind of a root word in there,
which is synonymous with being holy, right?
And so it says, "Come near and bring sacrifices and thank offerings into the house of God.
And the congregation brought in sacrifices and thank offerings, and as many as were of a free heart, burnt offerings."
And the number of the burnt offerings which the congregation brought was three score and ten bollocks.
If you think about it, you know, a bollock is a pretty big animal, and there's 70 of them.
So this is a lot of meat being sacrificed here.
100 rams, 200 lambs, all these were for a burnt offering to the Lord.
And the consecrated things were 600 oxen, 3000 sheep.
So in addition to sacrificing animals, they're also just giving animals to the house of God,
to just be owned by the house of God so that they'll have cattle that they own for the future.
"And the priests were too few," verse 34, "so that they could not flay all the burnt offerings."
Because that's technically their job as priests.
"Wherefore their brethren the Levites did help them, till the work was ended,
and until the other priests had sanctified themselves."
So they're kind of bending the rules a little bit because they're saying,
"Hey, we just don't even have enough manpower to offer all these sacrifices,
so let's get the Levites involved in some of this that normally the priests would be doing."
At least just helping out with the menial part of just stripping the skin off the animals and flaying them
so that the priests can just focus on the part that only they can really do.
And then it says that the reason that they had to do this is because the Levites
were more upright and hard to sanctify themselves than the priests.
So it just turned out this way that the Levites were a little bit more zealous about the things of God.
And here's the thing, there are going to be situations like that sometimes
where people who are higher on the totem pole, as it were,
are not as zealous as people that are lower on the totem pole.
This is not always the way it is, but sometimes that's the way it is, right?
You could have a situation where you have members of the church that are more zealous than the pastor.
Members of the church that are more zealous than the deacons or whatever.
You could have situations in any area of life like that, in a business, in a family, in a church,
where the people who are in authority are not always necessarily the most zealous people.
But at the end of the day, authority is authority.
At the end of the day, there's a certain order, there's a certain chain of command.
The priests are still the priests. The Levites are still the Levites.
And at the end of the day, yeah, the Levites were a little more zealous
and doing a better job of quickly getting in gear to serve the Lord.
But at the end of the day, though, there's still a structure.
The high priest is still the high priest. The priest is still the priest.
The Levites are still the Levites. Everybody in the congregation is still the congregation.
So we don't want to necessarily overthrow authority
because somebody lower on the chain of command is more zealous.
Here's the thing, if you're that person that's more zealous, just keep being zealous.
Because guess what? You don't need a position to be zealous.
You don't need a title to be a great Christian or to be a great servant of God.
You may not have a title of pastor or deacon or evangelist, but you know what?
You could still do great works for God without being given that title.
And at the end of the day, many that are last shall be first and first shall be last.
It's not like, "Oh, well, I'm a pastor, so I'm kind of in a special section at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
I just get an automatic-based package of rewards just for being a pastor.
And I'm kind of on a different tier. I'm on the platinum level. You're on a gold level."
That's not the way it's going to work.
There are going to be laymen that are getting greater rewards than pastors.
Now, obviously, pastors are going to be getting a lot of rewards too,
especially if they are serving God, doing a good job, getting a lot of persecution, going through stuff.
They're going to be rewarded as well.
But guess what? Not every pastor is necessarily doing great works for God.
There are some pastors that are just kind of doing their job, but maybe they're not that zealous,
not that effective, not that into it, but they're still doing the job.
And then you might have some church member who's super zealous, but you know what?
If that's you, you don't want to get prideful and start thinking, "I'm better than the pastor. I should have his job."
Because guess what? Everybody has a function.
And here's the thing. The pastor has a function. The layman has a function.
The music guys have a function. I mean, everybody's got their talent, their ability, and their place.
And here's the thing about Faithful Word Baptist Church. We've been around for 19 years now, right?
It's our 19-year anniversary this month.
So we've been around for 19 years, and let's face it, we are effective as a team.
You look at missions that have taken place, like the one that we just did in Jamaica.
That was a success. It was a huge success. It was wildly successful.
But guess what? That was a team effort. There's a lot that went into that.
There's money that went into that. There's leadership that went into that.
There's planning that went into that.
And then, obviously, the most important component, you could argue, are the people that are on the field actually doing the work.
But here's the thing. You have guys like Kenton, who went ahead, and also he paved the way for all those school preachings.
That was my understanding of how that happened, that he went ahead and paved the way for that.
So he played an important role, right? He did a certain job.
And here's the thing. I wasn't physically on that trip, because I'm banned from Jamaica.
But I did my own soul-witting in the Caribbean the same week, so I wouldn't feel left out.
And I got a bunch of people saved, too.
And here's the thing about that, is that even though I wasn't physically on that trip, though, I'm still a part of the team.
I'm still a part of this machine here, okay?
That basically brings in money and then channels that money toward the work of God and toward missions and toward outreach and toward these kind of cool things that we can do.
Because, let's face it, helping people out financially is part of how these things are able to happen.
Because, obviously, a lot of people are paying their own way or paying part of their own way, but also the church is sponsoring this stuff to a certain degree.
That helps get it done as well.
So it's like everybody's got a job. But then here's the thing.
There are other people who just, they gave financially to the church.
They didn't go on the trip. They didn't plan the trip. It wasn't their idea.
They didn't call the schools and set up the schools.
They didn't physically go there and do the soul-witting.
But they contributed financially to the church, and then, you know, that's where the funds came from.
Because guess what? When we don't have the funds, you know what we say?
When we don't have the funds, here's what we say.
Hey, we're going to have to slow down on mission trips for a little bit. Or hey, we're going to have to slow down on the Indian reservation trips for a little bit.
We're going to have to slow down. And then when the funds come in, we're like, all right, full speed ahead.
Yeah, let's go. Let's bring in more people.
And the more we pay for stuff, usually the more people we can bring in and get involved.
Because a lot of people just don't necessarily have the money.
And so there's a whole army of people that are praying and that are giving and that are planning and that are participating and actually going and doing these things, right?
There's a lot of different people that go into a team effort like that.
Now one guy who's just kind of a lone ranger cowboy that's not part of the institution here is not going to be able to have those kind of results.
He's not just going to go to Jamaica and just get 900 people saved and preach to 5,000 students.
He's not going to do it in a week. He's not going to do it in a year.
He's not going to do it in two years. It's just not going to happen.
It's something that takes a team effort, right?
And so what you have to understand is that different people have different roles and different functions and they contribute and help out and participate in various ways.
I have my job, my role that I play in all of this.
Guys like Kenton have the role that they play.
You know, the soul winners that are out there, they have their role that they play.
People that are praying, people that are getting, all the people.
And here's the thing, even people who didn't necessarily give toward that or even necessarily spend a lot of time praying for it.
You know, even just by supporting this church and just being a part of our church and coming here every week and just being the backbone of Faithful Word Baptist Church.
You know what? It's on the backs of those people that these trips happen.
Because, right? Because if our church weren't in existence, if our church weren't going strong and thriving, if we didn't have a healthy church here, we wouldn't be able to do stuff like that.
It's the healthy church here, Faithful Word Baptist Church, that is able to do something like that.
And here's the thing, you know, I'm sitting here talking about this Jamaica trip, but guess what?
Forget the Jamaica trip. Every single week we're doing stuff.
People are getting saved. We're winning souls. We're doing things.
We're reaching people online, in person, all different ways.
But guess what? All of that stuff, okay, is a team effort.
We need to understand everybody plays a role. Everybody has a part.
We don't want to start thinking, oh, I'm better than you. My job is more important than yours. You know, you're not zealous enough, whatever.
We need to just realize, hey, look, there's the hand, the eye, the nose, the foot.
Everybody plays their role. Everybody plays their part. And we can do great works for God as a church.
And we have done great works for God as a church.
And we, God willing, with the help of God, we will continue to do great works for God.
But, you know, you've got to be careful about just thinking that you can just remove certain pieces from the puzzle
and think that everything's just going to go full speed ahead, because it's not.
Right? God is a symbol of the team here. And we need to respect every part of that team.
And not just the ones that are the most prominent, or the ones that our mind would immediately go to.
Because there's a lot going on behind the scenes. There's a lot here.
There's a formula here, and we don't want to mess with the formula, okay?
And so I believe that every single person who's a faithful member of Faithful Word Baptist Church,
however they contribute, has a part in the fruits that happen on a trip like that.
Because here's the thing. We could talk about the awesome people who went on that trip.
And, you know, we could think about certain people, you know, 30-some people on that trip.
We could think of certain people that are kind of like soul-winning superstars. Right?
And, you know, I'm thinking of some soul-winning superstars in our church right now.
I'm not going to name any names, but I mean, there are some people in our church that you'd think are like,
"These people are the soul-winning superstars."
But here's the thing that you have to ask yourself.
You know, in another life, if they didn't go to Faithful Word Baptist Church,
if they went to some other lame liberal church, would they be the soul-winning superstar that they are right now?
You see what I'm saying? And so the point is that we all, everybody who's a part of the church, is helping.
Right? Everybody who's here and faithful is helping.
Now look, the guy who sits at home and doesn't go to church, doesn't participate, doesn't contribute, he's not helping.
He's not part of the excitement. He's not part of the results. He's not part of the action.
People who go join some lame liberal, watered-down, do-nothing church, you know what?
They don't get to be part of the action of a church like Faithful Word.
People that are at Faithful Word though and in their place and doing their job, you know, everybody's important.
Even if they never get on the plane and go to Jamaica or go to any Caribbean island or anywhere and do something.
You know, if they're just faithful here in Phoenix, they're a part of the team, they're staying by the stuff,
and I believe that God is going to reward those diligent, faithful servants who are just serving here in Tempe.
And then when God sees the great works that Faithful Word does, He knows that it's on a substratum of just people
that come to church here that may never actually get involved in the mission strip directly in any way.
They're still a part of it because look, if we didn't have a church here with hundreds of people in it,
we wouldn't be able to do things on that magnitude that we've done over the years.
Think about the Fiji trip. You want to talk about something that was expensive.
You know, that was expensive. But here's the thing, 2,000 some souls saved? It's incredible, right?
But hey, everybody who contributed, everybody who participated, everybody who's just a faithful member of Faithful Word,
and by the way, there are also things that we don't necessarily think of, you know,
because it's easy to just think about things just like, you know, manpower and finances.
But what about just encouragement? What about just the people who are friendly and encouraging
and the people that you enjoy being around when you come to church?
And then you're like, well, you know, I like coming to church here because I enjoy coming to church here
because I like the people and it's encouraging and people are a blessing.
And then that person who likes to be here and then they keep going and then they go win a bunch of people to Christ in the Caribbean.
You know, if you made their experience at Faithful Word better,
you see how like there's so many things that go into it that you don't even think about.
Everybody is part of the team. But if you don't go to the church, you're not part of the team.
You know what I mean? If you're not participating or contributing in some way, you're not part of the team.
You're not part of the result if you're just a do-nothing, you know, that's just passively taking it all in.
So yeah, you know, giving financially, being physically here, being faithful, serving God,
praying, being an encouragement, being friendly, loving your brethren, all of it.
All of it goes into being an effective church like ours and the things that we're able to accomplish.
And if we're going to continue accomplishing great works for God, we need to all continue doing our work.
I got to keep doing my job. You got to keep doing your job.
And that's every man, woman, boy and girl. We all have a role to play. We all have a job to do.
And you know what? You can also flip that over and think that you also have the power to screw things up
and be an idiot and ruin future trips and ruin future works and cause people to not have a chance to hear the gospel
because of your selfishness and stupidity.
All right. On that positive note, let's just kind of quickly wrap up here.
The last thing I just want to point out because I'm out of time is just it says in verse 36,
"Has Achaia rejoiced?" And all the people that God had prepared the people, and this is the key phrase here,
"The thing was done suddenly." So notice the beginning of the chapter was first month, first day of the month.
All right. We cranked it out. It took us eight days. We're ready to go.
And then at the end, we emphasize once again, this thing was done suddenly.
You know what? You got a couple weeks until the end of the year.
Why not make some changes in your own life and do it suddenly?
You know, it's like, oh, I got a five-year plan to get right with God.
You know, maybe just think about getting right with God over the next couple of weeks.
Right? And start getting yourself in gear so that in 2025, you are a part of the team.
You're participating. You're making things happen around here.
You're helping us reach our goal and you're helping us with our mission.
What's our mission? What do we care about around here?
You know, everybody knows what we care about.
We just care about getting people saved and baptizing them and teaching people all things that Christ commanded.
So this is what we care about. We just want to get people saved and we want to get save people soul winning.
And we want to get save people right with God and following the Bible.
That's the mission. It's nothing about building our little kingdom here or our church here.
That's why we go to the other side of the world and win people the Lord that will never come here and never care about us or do anything for us.
Like if we were just trying to build our little kingdom here,
then we wouldn't pour tens of thousands of dollars into trips that happen on the other side of the ocean.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like Fiji is almost like the exact opposite side of the world.
It's got to be close. I think India is like the exact opposite.
I forget, when you dig, you end in China.
What's the time difference to those Fiji, Tuvalu, Vanuatu? How many hours?
Well, at 19, you might as well just say five.
You're just making it sound like it's more than it really is.
Okay, well it's not the other side of the world, but it's pretty stinking far away.
Maybe from a north to south perspective, it's pretty far away.
If you dig, you're not going to end in Fiji. You're going to end in China.
But the point being, we win a bunch of poor people the Lord in the Caribbean,
a bunch of poor people the Lord in Pacific Islands, a bunch of poor people on Indian reservations five hours away.
You know what? The chances are pretty slim that those people are going to come join our church.
And yet, here we are with a big crowd of people.
But here's the thing, we're not trying to build a big crowd of people here.
We're trying to build the Kingdom of Heaven.
And we don't care where those people come from.
And we're just trying to win people to Christ wherever we can.
And then God blesses us. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for your word. Thank you for this great chapter.
And thank you for a man like Hezekiah, Lord, help us to be like Hezekiah,
where we serve you even if other people aren't.
And where when we do have a chance to do something for you, Lord,
we get all in, we do it quick, we work hard, we don't drag our feet, Lord.
Help us all to be a part of the team here.
Thank you for everyone who faithfully serves here at Faithful Word and whatever the capacity.
Help us all to continue to be in our places, fulfilling our role, doing our job,
so that we can have a great year in 2025.
And in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
Amen. Let's finish off the night by singing song number 431.
Song number 431, "Silent Night."
Song number 431.
Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright.
Love your virgin mother and child. Holy infant so tender and mild.
Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.
Silent night, holy night. Shepherds quake at the sight.
Glory stream from heaven afar. Heavenly hosts sing hallelujah.
Christ the Savior is born. Christ the Savior is born.
Silent night, holy night. Son of God loves your life.
Radiant beams from thy holy face. With the dawn of redeeming grace.
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth. Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.
Silent night, holy night. Wondrous star with my light.
With the angels let us sing hallelujah to our King.
Christ the Savior is born. Christ the Savior is born.
May everybody have a great evening during this midst.
[piano music]