What Rules My Heart (September 3rd, 2017) - Mike Armstrong

All right, well as you're grabbing your Bibles, if you would turn in them to 2nd Chronicles chapter 29.

2nd Chronicles chapter 29.

And uh I'm trusting that you know many of you, all of you, uh had yourselves a great summer and you've been able to get a chance to get away with friends or family and just kind of recoup and rest and re-energize and all of that.

And just last Sunday I was kind of sharing how I've had the opportunity to do that with my family this summer, and I found that to be so, so helpful.

And one of the things that I've noticed the Lord kind of doing over the last, well, this summer and last summer for sure in a big way, is really using that time of getting away as a way to uh really kind of press in on some things uh in my heart and really bring me to the place where uh really I am sort of recommitting some things in my life and in my you know relationship with him that maybe I've let kind of drift off to the side a little bit, some things uh that maybe I haven't given full attention to uh and all of that.

And so I've sense that the Lord has really used my times, uh my vacation times, to help me kind of recommit to him being the thing, the one, uh the one thing that rules my heart.

Have you ever noticed about this for yourself?

It's so easy for us.

There are so many things in our lives uh that deceptively kind of crowd out the supremacy of the Lord in our hearts.

Have you noticed that?

Different idols and things that we worship and things that we give a lot of priority to, and in some cases too much priority to.

And our joy and our love for the Lord and our passion and our desire for him kind of gets, I don't know, kind of squeezed out, and after a while we feel kind of empty, we feel kind of numb and dull inside and all of that.

And I mean, listen, it's very, very easy for us to let that happen.

Have you seen this in your life?

I know that I have seen that for sure, and I've been so encouraged, you know, even in the last month or so, as the Lord has been, you know, not just convicting me, where like it's like a heavy-handed, you know, heart-hurting kind of a thing, but also just really inspiring me to this.

Like, no, you need to, you need to bring the focus back to me.

I need to be the thing that's captured your affections and your heart and get it, giving me a sense of like joy in this and passion for this, and I want to go after this.

I don't want anything to get in the way of my relationship with the Lord.

And so today we're gonna spend our time talking about these things.

We're gonna be going through a really important passage.

We're gonna get into that in just a second, but the idea is we wanna get to the place where where it's the Lord that's ruling our hearts.

The Lord is ruling our hearts.

And so the challenge and the encouragement and even the push from me to you today, and really it's from the Lord to you, would be to really think through what are the things that are getting in the way?

Right?

What are the, you know, what are the idols?

What are the what are the things that you know I'm just not facing?

I'm not dealing with them as seriously as I should be, and because of that, um, my relationship with Lord with the Lord is not as robust and awesome and as life-giving as it should be.

All right, so I really challenge you, kind of throwing down the gauntlet there a little bit, but really challenge you to just look at this and and soften your hearts and invite the Lord into all of this and and really just lay that before him.

Lord, would you have your way uh in me today?

All right, that's what I've been praying for for you this week as I've been kind of prepping this and going through all of this.

And so I just want to pray with you now and we'll jump right in.

Lord, thank you so much for being a God of second chances and tenth chances and billionth chances, Lord, how you continue to be gracious and kind to us, how you draw out our hearts, Lord, as you kind of point out the areas that have gotten out of hand and and the areas that are vying for uh your attention.

Lord, all the all the things that we put on the throne of our hearts that rule and govern us, Lord, I pray that we would be filled with conviction here today, Lord.

I pray that we would be filled with great joy, knowing that nothing compares to you, nothing at all.

And so, God, pray that I pray that you would move, that you would work by your spirit.

No words of man, no words that I can say can turn a heart, can change a heart.

Lord, that is that is in your court.

And so, God, we humble ourselves before you.

We ask for you to move and work, Lord.

I pray that that our church, that harvest, would have courage and boldness and a fearlessness to just face these things, to confront these things.

In many ways, many of us, even as I've I've talked for the last two minutes, we already know what those idols are.

It's not a surprise to us, Lord.

We already know.

What we really need is the courage to face them head on and to deal with them by the power of your spirit.

So, Lord, would you help us?

And Lord, before we get into all of this, we especially want to pray for our brothers and sisters uh to the south, Lord, in Houston.

And just the tragedies that have been going on there and the flooding and all the problems, Lord.

We have uh we have a harvest that meets down there, and we pray for Pastor John Kenningham and the work that he and his congregation are doing to reach out and be a blessing and rescue and restore and be a light for the gospel in Christ.

We just pray that you have mercy on them, that you would encourage them, Lord.

We pray that you would use the church to do a mighty work in the hearts of people, Lord, as what is most important in a lot of people's lives has been literally taken away.

And so, God, I pray that as you've carved out that in their minds and in their hearts, you would show them that Christ should be in that spot.

Lord, we thank you that you use disaster and tragedy to accomplish great things in our lives.

Lord, we pray that you would do that in Houston and you would bless all the efforts there, protect people, Lord.

Now, as we get into your word, open our eyes, open our hearts, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, so why are we looking at this passage today?

Why are we looking at 2 Chronicles 29, verse 1, all the way to the first verse in chapter 31?

2 Chronicles 29:1

Well, the reason for that is because it shows us an extremely significant moment in the history of God's people.

Okay, it's not just, you know, another story, it's not just, oh, that was nice.

No, this is like, it was a big deal.

Okay, King Hezekiah was reigning in Judah at this time, okay, over God's people.

He was he was the 30th king since Solomon.

Okay, that was a period of 215 years.

Okay, 215 years.

Now, what you need to know is that the kingdom uh of Israel is actually divided at that point.

Okay, you had Israel uh in the north, and they had about 18, they had 18 kings during this time.

You had Judah in the south, where Jerusalem was, that's where Hezekiah was reigning.

They had 12 kings uh during this time, and a lot of the kings were, I mean, just flat out worthless, right?

They were they were terrible and awful and led God's people away from the Lord for sure.

Okay, and it wasn't until uh Hezekiah, okay, not one king before Hezekiah, again, that's a period of 215 years, okay, did did Hezekiah uh lead God's people to such a thorough return to the Lord?

Right?

He took it seriously.

And he was like, enough's enough, we are we are going for this.

That's that's 250 years of God's people having far too casual an approach to sin.

Okay, not even the really good kings like Asa and and Jehoshaphat, they were they were great guys, they were great kings, but not even they dealt with the idolatry and tore down the high places.

We'll get into that a little bit more later, but not even they did it to the to the extent that Hezekiah did it.

They did some good things, but again, they didn't go quite as far as Hezekiah.

He led them to such a wholehearted, wide-scale purging of sin and idolatry.

There's this nationwide return to the centrality of the law and the centrality of worship.

Hezekiah, through the power of the Spirit, did that.

And in chapter 30, verse 26, we'll get to it a bit later, but I just want to read it right now.

This is what it says since the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem.

Nothing like this.

Pretty incredible.

Now, listen, as I've been kind of thinking about that and reading through that this week, listen, what's been kind of stirring up in my soul is hey, I want to be like that.

I want to be like Hezekiah.

I want to care that much about my relationship with the Lord and the purity of that.

And beyond that, I want I want you to care about that.

I want you as individuals and as and as couples and as families to care and to take seriously your relationship with the Lord.

I want our church to care about that.

I want our church to catch fire for him and to be super passionate about him.

And as you know, people come in and we have guests and people come in, they're like, whoa, like the Lord is, you know, the Lord is at work here.

There's something different about what's going on in God's people uh here at harvest.

I mean, don't you want that?

Isn't there at least a part of you that you're like, yeah, there's that, that's stirring up in me.

Right?

I I want that.

I want to go after that.

I want to be, I want to be done with everything that is that is holding me back.

Okay, so enough's enough.

Yeah, done done with the done with the excuses.

Okay?

Well, I'll get to it later.

No, done with the the passivity, right?

I know it's there, but oh well, right?

Done with done with that, done with the the divided heart of I'm going for the Lord on the weekends and I'm going for me, you know, the other five days or six days a week.

Enough of, you know, me on the throne of my life, enough with, you know, things and stuff and materialism and and all of that ruling me and dominating my affections, done with all of it.

I will let the Lord rule my heart.

That is where we're going today.

And the first thing here is this by dealing with my sin issues as the worship intensifies.

All right, we gotta face the sin.

We just have to.

Now take a look at this.

We're gonna read this here.

Now we got a lot of ground to cover here today, all right?

We're not gonna read literally every single verse.

I'll kind of explain certain parts of it and we'll jump ahead to other parts here, or we'll be here till next Sunday.

All right, but here we go.

Uh, starting in uh verse 1, chapter 29, it says, Hezekiah began to reign when he was 25 years old, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem, okay?

So in the southern kingdom of Judah, all right?

His mother's name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah, and he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David, his father had done.

So his original father traced it down through the lines.

He did what David did.

Now his immediate father, Ahaz, okay, we'll talk about him in a little bit.

Not a good guy, right?

Awful.

And so it was really cool, though, that Hezekiah kind of gets things, gets the ship righted, and here we're gonna see how he starts to do that.

In the first year of his reign, verse 3, in the first month, okay, so he's not like I'm just gonna kind of ease into this a little bit and get situated and get to know some people for No, he's like, we're going for this right away.

Right?

He says he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them.

He brought in the priests and the Levites.

Okay, the Levites were one of the tribes that were assigned by the Lord to help and assist the priests.

Okay, so the priests and Levites, they kind of go hand in hand.

He brought them in and assembled them in the square on the east, and he said to them, Hear me, Levites.

Now consecrate yourself and consecrate the house of the Lord, the God of your fathers, and carry out the filth that is in the holy place.

Okay, so consecrating yourself.

The idea there is to is to uh dedicate yourself, okay, set apart to uh dedication to the Lord, to set apart as holy, get things right.

He's like, do that with yourself, we've got to do this with the temple, and we've got to do this in the Lord's house.

He's like, get rid of all the filth, the things that my own father brought into here, all these pagan images and all the worship that was happening here, we are purging all of it.

Okay, and then instead of like uh like a garage sale, it's like we're gonna we're gonna we're not gonna sell it and make some money off this, we're gonna we're gonna destroy it.

Done with this.

Verse 6 for our fathers have been unfaithful and have done what was evil in the sight of the Lord our God.

They have forsaken him and have turned away their faces from the habituation, habitation of the Lord and turned their backs.

They also shut the doors of the vestibule, it's kind of the outside area of the temple.

They shut the doors, worship's done.

That's what our fathers did.

And put out the lamps and have not burned incense or offered burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel.

Therefore, this is what happens as a result of that.

Therefore, the wrath of the Lord came on Judah and Jerusalem, and he made them an object of horror, of astonishment, and of hissing.

That's kind of an ugly picture.

This is how people looked at Israel and Judah, and they're like, ee, not good.

They are not on the Lord's good side right now.

Okay, keep going.

He says, As you see with your own, as you see with your own eyes.

Okay, you guys have seen it, you guys know, you see the consequences.

We're dealing with it.

For behold, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this nonsense.

And then verse 10, I love this.

This would be worth underlying.

Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord.

Love that.

We're gonna come back to it.

The God of Israel, in order that his fierce anger may turn away from us.

My sons, do not now be negligent, for the Lord has chosen you to stand in his presence, to minister to him, and to be his ministers, and to make offerings to him.

Now, what's really crucial to notice here as you kind of read through this, and even in the verses kind of that follow here, uh, is the is the desire for two very, very important things.

Okay, two very important things.

First of all, there's a desire in Hezekiah's heart, okay, to deal with sin.

Right?

I think that's pretty clear as you read that.

Right, we're getting rid of all the nonsense, all the filth in the temple here.

We're gonna deal with all of that.

But then on top of that, okay, there's also this desire to be close to the Lord.

Right?

We want to worship him.

We want that to be passionate and amazing and awesome.

And he says there in verse 10, uh, I want to covenant with him.

It's my it's my heart's desire.

This wasn't a this wasn't an external fake putting it on, you know, kind of a thing.

It was, it was, it was welling up from the heart.

Right?

It was growing and it was a passion inside him.

Now, what I've noticed is, you know, kind of happens in my heart and in my life, and I've noticed this in in other people too, other believers, as I've had, you know, countless conversations with people over the years, is that it's really easy for for us to have one of those things or the other.

Have you noticed that?

One or the other.

Some people are like, you know, super hardcore about their sin, and they're so sick of their sin, and they're sick of the you know, the consequences of their sin, and you know, they always talk about it and think about it and you know pray against it, and they're getting people to help them, and you know, a lot of that is you know is is really good, but but what's missing is they don't really have uh a desire to be intimate with the Lord.

There's not this desire to worship him.

And it's really easy to kind of get into that awful and and joyless and and frustrating experience of uh of what I've called before as sin avoidance mode.

Right?

And that can easily sum up how a lot of Christians live their lives.

I'm I'm just trying not to sin, not to sin, not to sin, not to sin.

And and and that's the direction, that's the thrust of my life.

But I'm not really giving any attention to the fact that I'm supposed to actually love the Lord and love him and love what he loves and be passionate about God's people and be passionate about a lost world and all of that.

And so it's this this hatred of sin that on one hand is is excellent, right?

It's really good, but but we spend all of our energy on that, and we're not cultivating a passion for the Lord, and we don't desire that that that covenant with him, a heart that loves to worship, and that's intensifying and growing the you know, the more we're praying for that and seeking all of that.

You know, again, where it's our what's our where it's our love for the Lord that's motivating our hatred of sin.

Right?

Not the fact that our sin causes us problems, right?

That's like a secondary motive.

But if you truly want to deal with your sin, love the Lord more, right?

And I love this phrase that I heard before and I and I don't know who said it.

I can't remember who said it, just know that it wasn't me.

All right, but I love this.

It's we worship our way into sin and we worship our way out of it.

Isn't that good?

Okay, trying to hate sin detached from a burning passion in worship and and and love of the Lord, that that's just a problem for a lot of believers.

Right?

It's a sin avoidance mode existence.

Listen, that's so frustrating.

It's so hard.

If you don't love the Lord, you're gonna keep you're gonna keep uh struggling with getting victory over your sin.

Okay, but here's the other thing.

Other Christians go they go the opposite way.

Right?

It's kind of like the other side of the same coin.

They they love God.

Okay, I'm kind of putting that in quotations because we know that to love God means to obey him.

Okay, but I mean, on the surface, on the outside, they have this love of God, this, this, you know, they kind of give off this sense that they're pursuing a relationship with him, and and maybe they're really vibrant believers and they're you know, they're they're they're passionate about their relationship with him, and they appear to have all kinds of joy and and vitality in the relationship, and they're full of life, but right, but they're not all that mindful about their sin, right?

And they don't, they don't give it the right kind of attention that they need to be, you know, giving it.

And maybe they're really just they're they're just immature about all that, and maybe they're they're kind of redefining what sin is.

They don't want to call sin what the Bible calls sin.

The end of the day, that's just creating a God, you know, to suit your own desires, which is a huge problem.

Okay, again, maybe they're just incredibly unwise and they're not mature in all of that yet.

You know, they're blind to their sinful tendencies, and they don't even realize that you know that what they're doing is again immature or unwise or or just flat out wrong.

But on the outside, you might look at them, they're like, man, that person's full of zeal and passion and and full of spirit, and they you know maybe sing during a church service, and you know, they listen to all the right kind of music you would think a Christian should listen to, maybe.

And you know, again, they've kind of got that that external piece, this the spirits there, the joy.

Okay, but there are some serious deficiencies under the hood.

Okay, they again they love the Lord, at least it kind of appears that way on the outside.

They focus on the passion, they they focus on the worship side of things, they they focus on the feeling.

I just want to come and feel and and I want to experience the Lord, and it's this like amazing vibe, you know, and maybe they're going for you know, they're going for that, but again, with with not much attention to the brokenness that Christ came to fix and heal.

Okay, so having so having one or the other, having a you know, just a pure focus on getting rid of sin, but to the exclusion of developing a heart that worships or or have or the other side of it, where you're just like all about worship and and the passion and the zeal, but without really a proper attention uh to the sin part of things, having one or the other is to seriously miss out on what the Christian life's all about.

Right?

It's to miss it.

You got like half the package there.

Okay, but what you notice here is that Hezekiah, he pursues both, he's going for the whole thing.

Okay, he understands the importance of going after all of it.

He cleanses the temple, he gets rid of the idolatry and all of that nonsense, and he gets the Levites and the and the priests together, and he establishes worship again, and he invites the you know the surrounding tribes to get in on this, and you guys come, we need to return to the Lord, and we're gonna see a bit more of that as we go.

But you see that it's combined with the heart to establish, re-establish this covenant with the Lord from the heart.

We saw that in verse 10.

And what you see is that it's this is intensifying, it's bubbling up, it's it's starting to grow and become more passionate him as he approaches both of these things.

Now take a look here, uh verse 26.

See, verse 26.

The Levites stood, uh the Levites stood with the instruments of David and the priests with their trumpets.

And Hezekiah commanded that the burnt offering be offered on the altar.

And when the burnt offering began, the song to the Lord began also, and the trumpets accompanied by the instruments of David, king of Israel.

And it says this, the whole assembly worshiped.

And the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded.

All this continued until the burnt offering was finished.

When the offering was finished, the king and all who were present with him bowed themselves and what's the word?

Pardon?

Worship, there we go, that's the interactive part.

And Hezekiah, verse 30, the king and his officials commanded the Levites to sing praises to the Lord with the words of David and of Asaph the seer.

They they and they sang praises with gladness, and they bowed down and gonna give you another shot.

Worship, there we go.

Then Hezekiah said, You have now consecrated yourselves to The Lord, come near, bring sacrifices and thank offerings to the house of the Lord.

And the assembly brought sacrifices and thank offerings, and all were were of a willing heart.

You see that?

A willing heart and brought burnt offerings.

One of the things that I have noticed over the couple of years that we have been a church, and I'm sure that some of you have noticed this too, is that the kind of the passion, the zeal uh when it comes to just our corporate times of worship here as a church, leaves a bit to be desired.

Right?

Is that fair to say?

Is that fair to say?

You know, and and we've kind of sensed that it's a bit of uh, you know, it takes a lot to kind of get the gears turning and you know to get people to, you know, to kind of sing and express that and and all of it.

And I thought, you know, just I could hear you guys singing today, which is really cool and really awesome.

But I think overall, there's kind of this like kind of muted vibe that I think takes place a little bit uh here uh in our services.

Not every single Sunday, not anything like that, but um I think we see a little bit of that here.

And I think maybe some of you have seen that.

Now, again, there might be like a million reasons why that's the case.

Maybe for some of us, maybe for lots of us, maybe for a few of us, it's it's sin.

Maybe it's sin in our lives that we're not dealing with.

Right?

And we're not we're not serious about that.

And again, because of that, our zeal and our joy for the Lord is like disappearing, right?

Where there's there's not a lot of passion there.

And so we come in and we just kind of stand here and we're kind of just consumers maybe during the service.

You know, maybe for us it's uh it's a lack of heart preparation during the week.

And so maybe you've kind of fallen into this rut, or maybe this is always the way it's been for you.

You're kind of like uh, you know, one hour a week on Sunday mornings Christian.

Right?

And and you come in and this is you, but kind of through the week, you're not like reading the scriptures, you're not really praying, you're not really plugged into the church or anything like that.

So, so guess what?

Of course you're gonna be ice cold when you come in here, right?

You're gonna come in and you're like, it's gonna take forever to kind of get going because if it's just Sunday mornings for you, listen, that's not enough.

That's not it.

The Lord wants your life.

Not an hour and a half at a service, right?

Maybe it's I've said this before, but maybe it's because they're just way too Canadian.

Right?

Canadians are just, we're so reserved, right?

We're so nice.

I hate that word, by the way.

But we're so, we we're not very, we're not an expressive bunch, are we?

We like to, you know, we like to just kind of stand there quietly and you know, not say a lot, not rough a lot of feathers, and the expression piece, I think, is a little bit more challenging for us, just as a culture as a whole, right?

So maybe that's one of the reasons for us.

Okay, maybe for maybe for a lot of us, it's kind of just an un you know, an unawareness of what are the expectations in worship?

Right?

Like what are what are they?

What is you know, what is expected of me from the Lord?

What is the kind of the heart of worship that we're going for here as a church, here's Harvest Bible Chapel?

You know, I want to remind you that our our second pillar, we have four pillars that we're pretty jacked about here.

Okay, our second pillar is lifting high the name of Jesus in worship.

We want to be passionate about that, not just during a service.

Worship is way more than singing, all right?

I hope we understand that by now.

But we want to be passionate, we want to lift high the name of Jesus in worship.

We don't just want to be about one pillar or two or three, we want to be all about both.

And I get it, that's a point of discipleship, and that's a point of the Lord doing a work in our heart.

And again, this worship bubbling up and all of that in us.

And so, really, over the next couple of weeks, as you know, John Shinn, our worship director, and I have been kind of talking about this and praying about this and praying for our own hearts because we feel the same thing too.

Over the next couple of weeks, starting next Sunday, actually, you're gonna be hearing from him, and he's gonna be sharing in the call to worship just some things that we want to go for as a church this fall.

And we want to actually show you guys and teach you guys the kind of worship culture that we're looking to build here as a church.

And so we're gonna go through, I don't know, five, six, seven, whatever things, not all at once.

We're gonna kind of spread that out, and we're gonna allow uh John as our worship director to really lead us and guide us in this, and so that everyone is clear, everyone's on the same page, and that's so we can be fierce and fired up and passionate.

And listen, in no way faking that, that doesn't please the Lord, that's not what we're going for at all.

We don't want you to feel like this is guilt-tripped in any way, and if I just sing loudly, my mic will get off my back.

That's not what it is.

We want this to be from the heart.

Is that what you want too?

Here's one thing that I will say, I'll take this one off of John's plate.

Okay, one thing that you can do to make our worship times that much better, and not just for our experience, but to glorify the Lord better, is flat out show up early.

Right?

Have you noticed that this has become a problem again?

Right?

And we have, we have people, a lot of people, you know, show up just really late, and you're walking in second, third, fourth song, sometimes even into the sermon and all of that.

And listen, you are big time shortchanging yourself when you when you do that.

You're coming in and you're missing out on something that we have put a lot of prayer and time and thought and specific crafting in to glorify and honor the Lord.

And so if you're showing up a f you know a few minutes late, even it means that for one, you're shortchanging yourself, but you're also shortchanging other people because it becomes a huge distraction.

I don't know if you've noticed this, and this is kind of getting into the weeds a bit, but then I'll move on.

But John will often do like a call to worship at the very beginning of the service, right?

You know, he's getting us, kind of rallying the troops to worship the Lord.

Well, sometimes there's like 50 or 60 people still moving around, right, during that time.

I like I'll be sitting right here and I can't even hear them.

Right?

There's just a lot, and we're so easily distracted, right?

We really are.

And so something's happening.

We're just so it's not just us that we're shortchanging, we're shortchanging people as well.

And so that's just uh hopefully an encouragement to you.

Hopefully, again, you're not feeling like I'm slapping you on the hands, but just an encouragement.

Be here early.

Be here early.

Don't come late.

Don't do it.

It's it's again, it's not it's not setting yourself up to worship the Lord passionately.

Okay, enough's enough.

We'll let John say the rest of it, all right?

Speaking of enough's enough, here's the second thing.

I will let the Lord rule my heart by knowing that God is gracious and merciful when I return to him.

Okay, gracious and merciful.

Okay, so next up for Hezekiah was uh to return to celebrating the Passover.

Right?

The Passover is a celebration that they had not done nearly enough as a nation.

And so the Passover, of course, was remembering uh what God had done when he had rescued his people from Egypt all those years before uh through the hand of Moses.

Right?

And the angel of death passed over the homes that had the blood of the lamb over the doorposts, and and and if they had the blood of the lamb on the doorpost, by faith they were trusting the Lord, and he would, and he would just pass over them.

But what happened with the Egyptians is that he would pass over their doorposts that of course didn't have the blood, and and and and he took their firstborns, and it was an incredibly awful kind of thing that happened.

But they would gather together and they would they would celebrate the salvation of the Lord in that moment.

That was something that just hadn't been happening uh nearly enough, and it was uh again just a reminder of the goodness of God.

And so take a look at this now uh in chapter 30 as they celebrate this, starting in verse five.

It says, So they decreed to make a proclamation throughout all Israel.

So like they're they're notifying everybody, from Beersheba to Dan, that the people should come and keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel, at Jerusalem, for they had not kept it as often as prescribed.

So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his princes, as the king had commanded, saying, O people of Israel, return to the Lord.

Love that.

Return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that he may turn again to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria.

Do not be like your fathers and your brothers, who are faithless to the Lord God their fathers, of their fathers, so that he made them a desolation, as you see.

Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were.

Okay, so he's calling out for humility.

Humble yourself.

But he says, But yield yourself to the Lord, and come to his sanctuary, which has been consecrated forever, and serve the Lord your God, that his fierce anger may turn away from you.

For if you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land.

For the Lord your God is, listen, gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you if you return to him.

Now, I think for us, it's really easy for us as we kind of do an assessment on our life and where have we been at with like the idolatry and the sin and all that?

It's really easy for us to kind of feel overwhelmed about that whole thing.

You ever feel like you're at the very bottom, the foot of a mountain, and I've got, you know, I've got a long ways to go here, and you know, what you know, and you're at your you know, everything just seems so daunting, and you're thinking, you know, you know, what if the recommitment doesn't stick?

You know, what if I can't keep this going?

What if I lose steam in all of this and I lose joy?

And, you know, what if I fail?

What if I stop caring?

Or, you know, or even more primary, you know, question, where do I even begin?

Right?

It seems like there's a lot of things that are a mess, and how do I how do I get this thing back on the rails?

Listen, whether you're trying to make wide-sweeping changes in your relationship with the Lord and and the different areas of your life, or rather maybe just kind of looking to see some improvements in some areas that have already experienced growth and some areas you've already been given attention to.

Listen, whether it's one or the other there, there needs to be this recognition in you that it's God's grace and God's mercy that gets you there.

Okay, regardless, it's it's it's the Lord that does that.

Okay, the truth is you and I don't have what it takes to change our hearts.

For some of us, we feel really helpless about that.

For others, you start to realize that's a good thing.

It's not up to me to do all the work, it's up to the Lord's mercy and his and his grace to change me, to accomplish the transformation that I want to see in my life.

We need his power.

Right?

Power is synonymous with grace.

We often say it's a gift, which is true, but it's also his power in our lives.

We need his grace, we need his power, we need his mercy, which is the reality that God is infinitely kind to people who do not deserve his kindness.

You know, on top of needing these things, we actually need to, you know, to believe, to to trust, to know, okay, that God will give us mercy and grace as we return to him and you know, as we allow him to rule and govern our hearts as he should.

Okay, we see this really play out in you know, starting in verse 17.

Okay, again, chapter 30, right?

Verse 17.

It says, For there were many in the assembly, and this is really interesting.

Watch what kind of happens here.

For there were many in the assembly as people came and they gathered, and you know, they're right, all right, we're gonna follow the king here, and we wanna get back with the Lord, and we want to make sure we get this going.

There were many at the assembly who had not consecrated themselves, okay, so they hadn't gone through the proper rituals to get themselves clean.

Therefore, the the the Levites had to slaughter the Passover lamb for everyone who was not clean to consecrate it to the Lord.

For a majority of the people, many of them from Ephraim and Manasseh and Issachar and Zebulun, so these were the different tribes of Israel, okay, but because of many of them had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than prescribed.

Does that sound like a good idea?

No, I mean, if you know the Old Testament at all and you know the law, you know that the Lord had some very specific instructions and some very specific, very clear guidelines of how he was to be approached in worship.

And you need to go, you need to go through these, you know, in some ways to us anyway, seem very complicated cleansing rituals before you could just approach the Lord as you were.

Jesus Christ changed all that.

You know, Christ tore down the veil, so to speak, and now we have access to the Father because of what he did on the cross for us.

But back in the Old Testament, pre-Christ, okay, in the time of sacrifices and all of that, they had to go through these really specific rituals, and it shows us here that they weren't doing that.

And they were just coming to the Lord and they were taking the Passover, and they hadn't, you know, gone through the necessary steps.

And you might be thinking, that's not good.

Right?

The Lord's not going to be happy with this, but take a look.

Take a look.

Let me find my place.

Okay, verse 18, I'll read it again.

They have not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than as prescribed.

For Hezekiah, this is interesting, had prayed for them, saying, May the good Lord pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek the Lord, the Lord, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary's rules of cleanness.

And the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people.

He heard them and and healed them.

Amazing.

Amazing what happens here.

Okay, God's God's mercy and God's grace is what God's got God's people back on track here.

It wasn't them, you know, doing everything the right way and the boxes perfectly and and doing all of that.

No, it's completely God's grace.

He decided in his goodness and in his kindness and in all of that, but in con in God's goodness and in God's kindness, he decided to overlook that for the time being.

Why?

Because the people's hearts were so zealous, and like we so badly want to get back with the Lord, and they weren't kind of going through it all right, and he had mercy on them because they hadn't been following the law for a long time, and and the centrality of that again as a nation was just happening kind of as we speak here in real time.

And I mean, he was starting to rule their hearts.

I mean, they they they weren't even approaching him correctly, they were coming at it all backwards and all wrong, but again, they were so hungry and they were so eager that God that God heals them, meaning that he forgives them.

It's mercy and grace on display.

And likewise, you fast forward to the gospel and Jesus Christ on the cross.

The gospel, you know, tells us that our God is infinitely merciful and gracious.

That's what the gospel shows us.

That we can have our you know our sins forgiven and that we can be healed, and that all of that can be taken away, you know, once and for all through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is in and of itself an act of mercy and grace.

It's an act of mercy and grace.

It's a gift given to us that we couldn't possibly earn, we couldn't, you know, do enough to merit that.

Okay, it's merciful in the sense that we don't deserve forgiveness, we don't deserve healing, whether we behave mostly well or or not, we don't deserve clean hearts, we don't deserve transformation, we certainly don't deserve heaven or anything like that.

No, what do we deserve?

We deserve punishment, we deserve God's wrath, we deserve pain and separation, we deserve destruction.

And I would I would encourage you, if you haven't understood that up to this point, if you have not received Jesus Christ, would you come to the Lord?

Much like Israel was returning to God for the first time in a while, would you come to him?

Would you recognize that that Jesus wants to know you, he wants to forgive you, he wants to make you clean and make you whole?

All those other things that you're chasing after, they're all ultimately bottomless pits.

They won't fulfill you, they won't, they they won't satisfy you the way Jesus Christ Himself will.

And so would you turn your hearts to him?

Realize your sinfulness, realize your brokenness, recognize that Jesus paid for all of it on the cross about 2,000 years ago.

If you would trust him by faith, he will be your savior, he will forgive you.

Please do that today.

I encourage you, I challenge you, I plead with you, do it.

And if you're sensing a hunger to return to the Lord and to, you know, in you as the church here, as believers, that, you know, I gotta give over more, more of this real estate.

I need to give him more of that that space and listen, lose the idea that you can do it.

Okay, lose that.

It said fall on God's mercy and grace.

Fall on that, throw yourself at it and know, no, no that God is always willing to pour that out on you, shower that on you, and extend his mercy and grace uh in your life as you as you approach him eagerly and as you approach him honestly.

Okay, know that God is gracious and merciful when you return to him.

Okay, last thing, last thing.

Enough is enough.

I will let the Lord rule my heart.

I will let the Lord rule my heart.

Third thing, by wisely tearing down the idols that I tend to think aren't a problem.

Okay?

Now, this is really uh what the Lord has been pushing on me lately.

And this is this whole point, the last part of our time here this morning is really kind of, you know, it's coming out of the text first and foremost for sure, but my heart is just so resonating with this, and I've been so challenged by this from the Spirit lately, and hopefully you are too, as we look at this.

Take a look at it again.

And this is chapter 31, just the first verse, just one verse.

Isaiah 31 · chapter mention

It says this, now when we now when all this was finished, all Israel who were present went out of the cities of Judah and broke in pieces the pillars and cut down the asherim and broke down the high places and the altars throughout all of Judah and Benjamin and in Ephraim and Manasseh, until they had destroyed them all.

Then all the people of Israel returned to their cities, every man to his possession.

Now, I'm not sure if you're you know all that familiar with you know that that phrase high places, that phrase high places, but basically they were they were altars of worship.

They were altars where they would sacrifice to and worship Canaanite gods, okay, false gods of the various nations around them.

So a couple of examples, a couple that you would have heard of, you know, uh the Baals, right?

And you think of Baal and uh Elijah's showdown with the prophets of Baal and how that epic story of the Lord coming in and just showing his power over this false god.

That was that was one of the gods they worshiped of the high places.

Another one was Ashtareth.

Okay, that was the goddess of fertility.

Okay, and there was uh actual great sexual sin that would take place during these times of worship, and there would be prostitution and there would be all kinds of distorted sexual perversion that would take place as they worship uh the god Ashtareth.

She was the goddess of fertility.

Maybe you've heard of Molech before, that was another god that was worshipped.

And what they would do with Molech is they would actually, literally, sacrifice babies to him.

And it was actually Hezekiah's father, uh Ahaz.

Remember, I said that we would come back to him?

Okay, the king right before Hezekiah, his own dad actually sacrificed, it says, his sons in the valley of Hinnem.

So some of Hezekiah's own brothers had been had been burned.

I mean, just evil, awful, horrible things were happening here.

Outright, blatant, horrendous sin was taking place at these altars.

I mean, that's really that's three of what someone once counted, 26 false gods that would be worshipped in the high places.

Now understand the magnitude of what Hezekiah has done here.

Understand the magnitude of this verse.

Okay, it's so significant because he is the guy who decided to put an end, okay, to an end to these high places for the first time ever.

He had the wisdom, okay, and he had the courage to end 800 years of idol worship in Israel.

Too much idol accommod uh accommodation in the hearts and the actions of God's chosen.

117 times the Bible mentions high places.

Okay, and not one person did away with them as thoroughly as Hezekiah did.

Now you might be thinking, well, wait a second, what about Asah?

What about Jehoshaphat?

Because it does mention in there they actually did get rid of the high places.

So is there some contradiction there?

And you know, what are you saying, Pastor?

Well, the reality is those guys did do their best, or they did do, they accomplished some of it, but they didn't fully get rid of the high places.

And what would sometimes happen is they'd get rid of some, but not all.

You know, I believe it was Asa got rid of them, but they and and the people of Israel re erected them again, even in his in his rule and in his reign.

Okay, they they didn't tear them down, only partial.

Now, what does this reveal for for them?

But what does this reveal for us?

It reveals that we love to keep the door open to the possibility of idolatry.

We love that.

Love our idols.

It reveals that we tend to give focus and attention to certain sins, but not others.

Have you noticed this in your life?

It shows that at the end of the day, when it comes to idolatry, we just plain old love it.

We love idolatry.

Now, the idols, let's be really clear about this, the idols that we tend to worship here today and in our day and age are a little bit different than what they were experiencing here in Judah and in Israel.

They were literally bowing down to carved images, metal, wood, all of that type of thing.

And that's a little bit foreign to us for the most part.

Right?

Rather, our, so our idols aren't ones that we necessarily see or literally bow down to and worship as a deity.

No, our idols are a lot more subtle and dare I say deceptive than that.

Okay, our idols are idols of the heart.

Okay, and I love this.

I heard one pastor put it, and I've said this before.

Our idols tend to be good things that have become God things.

Good things that have become God things.

So when you look at the high places in Judah here, they were, I mean, obvious sin.

Right?

Sacrificing babies, no one's saying, like, yeah, that was probably a pretty good plan.

No one's saying that.

It was awful.

It was horrible.

Today it's a little, we're a little bit more easily deceived because they're they're good things and some things that we really need to have in our lives, and things that are okay to have in our lives, but if we're not careful, they dominate us.

We put too much importance on them.

We have too much focus on these things.

They they crowd out the Lord and they take away from our pure devotion to Him.

So, what I want to do is I'm gonna give you a bit of a list here of certain idols that are kind of common to just kind of, you know, North America, Canada, my heart, your heart, all of that.

And then go through some of these.

It's not gonna be on the screen, but you can kind of jot these down, listen to them, think very carefully.

Are these, you know, some of the ones that maybe I have?

And I would encourage you to be really open about this.

Okay, don't give yourself automatically a pass, because what I'm gonna say to some of you, you're it's gonna grade against you.

And I'm not gonna be in your good books.

Okay, because I'm gonna say some things, you're like, mmm, don't like that.

Right?

But you'll have the smile on, you know?

No, seriously, look honestly and carefully about all of this.

Now, again, how do you know if something might be an idol?

Right?

That's a good question to ask.

Well, I've I've actually got a couple of questions that you can ask yourself if you're trying to figure this out.

Okay, as I go through this list, which of these, if God took it away from me, would cause me to turn away from him?

Right?

Is there something we're gonna talk about here, or maybe it's not even included on my list, but something that if the Lord took that away, I would turn away from him.

I could never worship a God that takes that away from me.

Surefire idol for sure.

Okay, another question to ask yourself in the last week, what has dominated your thoughts, captured your emotions, or given you the greatest joy?

Okay, what is that thing this week?

Or what informs my identity and my worth or drives my passion in life?

The answer to those questions, if it's not Jesus Christ, guess what?

It's an idol.

Okay, so this is, we're getting into the gritty stuff here.

All right, this isn't surface-y at all.

We are, you know, shining the spotlight on those, you know, cobwebbed, dark corners of our hearts that we often don't want to face and don't want to look at.

I'm not trying to scare you at all.

This is really, really good.

And ultimately, the end of that as you face those things is indescribable joy.

That's what you're gonna have.

Okay, so here's a couple of idols.

Again, these are areas that we tend to think aren't a problem.

No, it's fine, I need to have this in my life.

And these for you, they might be high places that you've been unwilling to tear down.

Okay, first one, pretty obvious, money.

Money is an obvious one.

Now, this is a perfect example though.

Is money in and of itself evil?

Of course not.

You need money, I need money, we all need more of it right now because of the gas prices that just went up, right?

We have to have money to survive.

We have to give attention to that.

We have to work hard, we have to go to school so that we can get a good job.

We have to care and provide for ourselves and our families and all of it.

But money, if we're not careful, can rule and dominate our hearts.

It's our hearts that are their problem.

Our hearts take that good thing and warp it and twist it to the point where now that's my that's my driving, that's my driving inner force.

That's what I am going for, that's my motivation.

Okay, is money what drives you?

Is it is it the is it stuff and materialism?

Right?

And and it's the things that money can buy me.

It's all kind of lumped into one thing.

Isn't it like, man, you're dominated by thoughts of buying a house?

You're dominated by thoughts of renovating the house.

You're dominated by thoughts of, I gotta sell this lame house and buy a better house.

Right?

You see the materialism that ends up having, I gotta have a bigger house, a better, bigger and better.

It's the cars, it's the vehicles, it's the clothes, it's the toys, it's the all of it.

Materialism.

Wait a second, is it wrong for me to have some fun?

Absolutely not.

God made us passionate and gave us good things to enjoy.

And that's where you that's why it requires that we think very carefully.

We invite the Lord into all of this.

We just humbly lay this before him.

Lord, would you would you shake this out for me?

Would you help me to know if any of these things have become an idol in my heart?

If they have crowded out joy in you, if they have robbed me of passion for you.

Okay, see how it's more tricky?

It's not like I'm robbing banks and you know, that's that's kind of a lame joke, but I'm robbing banks.

That's an obvious sin that he just needs to go.

Right?

It's not like, yeah, there's there's room for some of some robbing in in your life.

No, it's not.

These are these are trickier.

There is room for some of these, but not in a sinful type of a way.

Okay, moving through some of them a little more quickly.

Power and ambition.

Is that an idol for you?

Ambition is so celebrated in our world, it's celebrated in the church.

Grow, develop, become more like Christ, take on more responsibility, take on more leadership.

We celebrate that for sure.

Can it become a problem?

It can become a problem.

It's certainly a problem out in the world, and we're we we desire power and control and all of that.

Maybe your abilities have become an idol.

You know, maybe you're that, you know, you're that kind of person who just makes the rest of us sick because you're just so good at everything.

Right?

Isn't that the worst when you know people like that?

They're like super talented at everything, and maybe for you that's become kind of who you are, and that's become your your identity and maybe it's your abilities.

Maybe it's maybe it's food and health.

Okay, this is where people start to get mad at the pastor.

Well, don't tell me what I can't eat.

No, literally, this is what I found.

People would rather be told they're going to hell than talk about like eating properly.

Right?

People are more comfortable with that, it seems.

I mean a little tongue-in-cheek, but it's not too far from the truth, is it?

And people don't want to talk about that.

Don't tell me I can't eat my whatever I want to eat whenever I want to eat it.

You know, and people looked for comfort and pleasure and joy in food, and I'm gonna, I'm a slave to it, and that is what I think about all the time.

And so many of us have our meal plans scheduled for the entire week, and I can't wait to just gorge myself at the idol of uh of food.

Other people are on the other side of that, and it's all about health.

For you, the focus is on you know your your your diet, and for you, it's on you know, your gym membership, and I'm a runner, and I lift weights constantly, and you kind of look self-righteously down at the person who doesn't care for themselves, while the person who maybe doesn't care for themselves in the way that you think they should looks down on you for being obsessed with you know being a gym rat.

Two sides of the same coin, both of them, become idolatry real quick.

Food and health, appearance.

I'm all about appearance.

Right?

And you spend copious amounts of money purchasing yourself an identity at the mall.

And if I'm wearing the right shoes and the right jacket and the right this and the right that, then I will find my worth.

Idolatry.

Is it wrong to spend some money on some clothes or to look good or to take care of yourself?

No.

So where is the line where that goes too far and where it's appropriate?

Here's the answer.

I don't know.

I can't tell you specifically and individually where that line is.

One person's line might be a little bit different than another person's line.

And that's why we have to come to the Lord in this Lord, have I crossed the line?

Have I gone too far?

Idolatry is a it's a serious thing.

Here's some more.

How about entertainment, pleasure, comfort?

We are ruled by this.

And let me talk specifically about myself for a second, it's just a way to help you kind of understand how I've been thinking this through.

This has been my big one.

I love comfort, I love rest, I love relaxation, I love entertainment.

And one of the things that the Lord has been kind of turning the screws on me a little bit on is something like social media, and for me, Netflix.

Right?

For me, I it's not it's like embarrassing to even say, really, man, Instagram?

That's an idol in your heart?

Yeah, it is.

Just trying to be honest about it.

Right?

And I can spend so much time just kind of scrolling on the couch in the afternoon, and my kids are like, pay attention to me, daddy.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just give me a sec.

Right?

Scrolling on my phone.

And I've been kind of realizing and assessing the fact that I spend, you know, too much of my free time, most of my free time, if I'm honest, just watching shows on Netflix.

And and so many evenings we're doing this.

Hey, what should we do as a family?

We've got to free it.

Let's watch Netflix, let's watch show, let's do this.

And and I talk my, I justify it as, well, I need to relax too.

You know, but then I've started to realize, well, it's it's dominating me.

And what I've looked at and seen and realized is these things are completely zapping my joy in the Lord.

I it's really hard for me to get the desire to sometimes even open this book.

And I used to be like a like a voracious reader, and I was soaking this stuff up, and and I've realized in in recent years that I don't desire that anymore.

I've got a stack of books on my nightstand that I haven't even touched.

And the Lord is starting to say, you need to get back into this.

My vacation was so great because I I was kind of I put the social media aside, I didn't have internet or Netflix or whatever it was, and I was able to just kind of get into a good old classic book again that was refreshing my soul and showing me how awesome the Lord is.

I'm like, this is amazing.

I need to make some changes.

I made some commitments.

Angie and I were talking about it.

I get home, what do you think happens?

Old habits, they're right there.

Because I've built up in my family, in my heart, a culture of this is what we do when we get home.

We turn on the TV.

Now, again, okay, lest anyone come and say to me, You mean Netflix or TV or watching the game is wrong?

No, okay?

It's amazing how many times sometimes they say, Well, it's not wrong.

What, buddy, I spent like 10 minutes talking about how it's not wrong.

Again, it's the line in our hearts.

At what point does it become an idol?

For me, I've realized those are just some big things.

They really are.

And I'm I'm trying, and I'm not there yet.

I haven't arrived, but I've invited the Lord into this, and we've been talking about this with as a family and with our kids and letting them watch too much TV.

We're scaling that back now.

We're just spending more awesome times just kind of chatting and hanging out as a family.

It's been so much better.

My soul feels much so much more alive.

I'm not saying any of this to tout myself as a hero of anything.

Okay?

I'm just saying this to help you kind of understand how I'm trying to work through what's wrong with me.

Okay, my media intake's been a problem.

Maybe that's you too.

Here's another one that people are gonna hate me for sports.

Sports.

For some of us, sports dominates.

Okay, it really does.

And it's very easy for sports to just completely take over our lives.

Now you need to understand, I'm a guy that loves sports.

I played hockey growing up, I played baseball, I played soccer, I played football, I played almost all of them except for basketball, because I'm too short.

Right?

But I played all that stuff and I loved it, and I still play it.

And listen, our son is starting hockey this fall.

And so we've had to talk through this and think through this, and how much time can we schedule for this and all of that?

And I'm not saying that having a kid super active in sports, again, is sin.

Okay?

I'm not saying that, but I'm saying we have to really consider and assess is this squeezing out the priority of the Lord, the priority of the church, the priority of serving in small groups and the things that God is most uh cares about most of all.

How about this one?

Music, academics.

I want my kid to you know be at the top of the class, honors, get into the best college, university.

Academics can be the focus.

No, they don't need to go to youth, they don't need to open their Bibles, they need to do homework.

Right?

That can that can be bad.

How about this one?

Family.

That's a good thing to become a God thing for sure.

Family?

Right?

If a family is everything and I don't get involved with anything else, or I don't, you know, it's just family fan child-centric home.

I'm not saying abandon your kids, okay?

Okay.

Family can become an idol.

How about this one?

Church.

Okay, church can become an idol.

And not just for pastors, okay, not just for pastors, but if it becomes your, you know, what you look to for affirmation, your identity, your worth, okay.

If you're finding more delight in serving the Lord than seeking the Lord, maybe church has become a bit of an idol for you.

Now, before we get some you know, funny guy sending me a text later saying, like, man, I gotta take a year off church, man.

It's become an idol in my life.

Right?

No need.

I know that.

Already my mind already went there.

All right, but think about it.

Church could be hospitality.

Hospitality could be maybe you're really good at hosting and you have people over and you can cook up a storm and you're just a machine at that.

So welcoming.

That's such good, that's a gift.

It's a gift to the church.

Or maybe that's like I'm finding my identity and my worth in this, and I need the accolades and I need the pat on the back constantly.

I just hospitality be one.

Friends can absolutely be one.

Talk to students a lot about this over the years.

If I don't have a friend, I'm depressed.

If I've got a friend, I'm all good.

Politics, the latest news, that can be an idol.

We often say that the politics piece is a big-time idol for our neighbors to the south, but it can be an idol for us too, as from the north, we take shots at them and what's going on down there.

Politics can be an idol.

Approval and belonging, that can be an idol.

Again, don't be too quick to give yourself a pass on these things.

Don't be.

And here's really what I've been kind of thinking about here lately.

I've been really sensing and finding a real dissatisfaction with my idols.

And that's what I've come to, is I've spending some hours, you know, a lot of hours even just kind of laying on the couch and watching things.

I'm kind of turning to mush spiritually a little bit.

I find that that happens.

And I'm sensing that I just, I simply can't afford to let this continu to continue.

I can't do this, not just because I'm a pastor, but because I'm a child of God.

I can't allow these other things to dominate me.

I can't allow these things to be my passion, the thing that I love most, the thing that my heart yearns for most of all.

I can't allow this to happen.

The last thing I want to do is stand up before the Lord at the end of my life and be like, yeah, I spent a lot of time watching Netflix and watching PGA Tour golf on Sunday afternoons.

Think about how dumb we're gonna feel if we spend all of our time giving in to these idols.

Idols numb us, they make us lazy, they hijack our hearts' greatest passions.

And really, the choice is here for all of us.

What are you gonna do?

Are you gonna tear down the high places?

Are you gonna face these head on with courage?

You don't need to know exactly what the what the game plan looks like.

It may or may not mean getting rid of it fully.

Maybe it means you're gonna fast from it for a while.

Maybe it means you're gonna have a conversation with somebody.

Someone can help me kind of figure out what's an appropriate amount of sports for my family.

What's an appropriate amount of bean media intake?

But the question is, will we face that head on?

Will we tear down the high places or will we let them continue to fester?

Again, some of you know exactly what those are.

It's been years and years of knowing what the problem is, but you haven't done anything with it yet.

The high places reign, they remain erected, and you continue to bow and worship at those thrones.

Are you gonna let that continue?

Listen, 800 years of Israel not tearing down high places thoroughly shows us how rare it is for God's people to actually do this.

We should be eager for it, but the reality is we don't.

And we aren't eager.

And because of that, the church could be fired up, our passion could be fired up, our relationships, our marriages, our community here, our everything could be up here, but it's kind of down here.

And we're so easily satisfied with that.

And we feel pretty good that we've grown in one or two or ten areas of sin, but there's like three or four more pretty bad ones that have gripped your heart.

Okay, so what's the question?

The question is, what's it gonna be for you?

Are you gonna deal with that today?

Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year.

Are you gonna deal with it?

I'm not gonna let another fall go by.

I'm not gonna let myself go down this road.

How will you respond?

We have the opportunity of celebrating communion together as a church today.

And I love when we get to do this.

And one of the big parts of communion is getting our hearts right, isn't it?

You know, bring the before the Lord our sin, our you know, the things that have gotten in the way.

The issues that we have not dealt properly with, the high places that remain standing.

So I'm gonna have our servers come forward right now.

And they're gonna be standing up here at the front, and I'll get to more of that in a second.

But but communion, again, a big part of it is getting our hearts right, but communion is really a remembrance of the cross.

It's remembering what Jesus Christ has done for us.

And again, it's it's realigning our souls and our minds and our hearts and our passion and our focus and our zeal on the most important event, on the most important person in history.

And so we celebrate the cross.

And that's exactly what this is.

We, you know, we eat a cracker and we, you know, drink a little cup of juice because we want to remember that's a symbol of Christ's broken body on the cross.

It's a symbol of his shed blood and how that was for you and that was for me.

And so, what an opportunity that we have today to really face this stuff head on.

To remind ourselves of the gospel, to allow that to stir us up with joy, to for sure deal with the problem areas that are there.

But listen, I want to encourage you with this.

Okay, know that when we face these issues and we purge the sin from our lives, understanding that it's God's power that does that in us, right?

But as we do that, the joy, the passion for the Lord, it just magnifies a million fold.

Life will be better.

We love our idols, we want to hang on to them because we think we need them more than we actually do.

Me kind of ditching Instagram for the last month for the most part has been so freeing.

Sweet, I can just leave my phone over there and I don't have to look at it anymore.

Right?

It's it's like it's amazing.

It's it's so much better than it was before.

Remind yourself of that.

Know that when I deal with this, life gets better.

My relationship with God gets better.

And so, what we're gonna do here with communion is celebrate it as a church.

And what I wanna say here, first of all, is that if you are, if you're not a Christ follower, this time isn't even really for you.

It's not for you.

And I would encourage you to not even come forward and not even grab this because it literally does nothing for you.

It doesn't impress the Lord, it doesn't get you closer to Him, right?

There's there's literally nothing, it's just an external thing for you if you do not know Christ.

I was going to encourage you instead to just sit and talk about what we've talked about in the gospel.

Now, Christ wants to save you from your sin and give you new life.

He wants to forgive you and make all things new.

But listen, as the church, what we're gonna have is we're gonna have, obviously, we've got them here, the trays at either side.

We've got some servers here.

They're gonna be standing up here.

John's gonna lead us uh in a song, and when you're ready, you can come forward, you can grab the elements, you're gonna find two cups stacked together, one as the cup uh the cracker, uh as a symbol of Christ's broken body.

The other cup stacked together has the juice in it, symbolizing Christ's shed blood.

You're gonna take that back into your seats, and listen, when you're ready, when you're ready, you can receive the elements.

You can take Them.

And so the encouragement to you is to not just like wait for the pastor, you see him drink.

It's not your neighbor, it's when you're ready.

If the song ends, the service ends, you are loved, is up on the screen, people start tearing things down around you.

It's been an hour and you are still not, you are still not ready, great.

Don't take it until you're ready.

Take a hard look at these issues that we've been talking about here today and purpose in your heart.

I'm gonna get these right.

The Lord, you Lord, you will rule my heart.

Nothing else will do.