Ezekiel’s Passover

II Chr 30: 6 – 21
Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 20 May, 2007

PENTECOST IS close, and it is a time of great rejoicing for Christians, because it reminds us of the coming of the Holy Spirit and his empowerment of his church for service.

It has been conventional among many Protestants to look on the resurrection as the source of spiritual power and to downplay Pentecost. We don’t deny Pentecost. It’s just not been where our focus has been.

And the Bible certainly speaks of resurrection power. We must never lose sight of it.

But I want us to think about this.

On 24 May 1738, John Wesley was converted. He writes of going to a meeting where, someone read from Luther’s preface to his Commentary on Romans. Suddenly Wesley found his heart strangely warmed and knew that he trusted Christ alone for salvation.

On New Year’s eve, 1738/9, seven of the Oxford Methodists and some sixty others held a watch-night service and love feast in a religious society whose rooms were in Fetter Lane, London. The seven were ministers of the Church of England. Wesley wrote about it in his Journal:

“About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of his majesty we broke out with one voice, ‘We praise thee, 0 God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.’” Whitefield pronounced this to be “the happiest New Year’s Day he had ever seen.” ¹

That was the point where the Methodist Revival broke out. Not in May, but in January the following year.

Soon Wesley began preaching in the fields and market places, and the movement never looked back.

Somehow, there must be a coming together where the Spirit of God can begin a great movement among the people of Christ.

Throughout history, it has been Christians with a sense of community who have brought about changes. St Francis and the Franciscans; John Wesley and the Methodists. William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect. Community breeds an attitude of transformation; community in Christ gives that attitude focus and direction.

And God builds community when his people come together to be broken and blessed.

John Wesley and his friends were willing to do the hard work, to stay at their prayer until the blessing came down, even though at three in the morning.

I have spoken a lot over the years about our need for revival. You have nodded and agreed. But how close are we to seeing it?

Our passage is about the transforming power of Christ. It is not put in those terms. They didn’t know about Jesus in those days. But everything they did points forwards to him.

What is our breaking point? Where do we let go and let God remake us, so that we have a story to tell, a shared story of how God has built us into a world–transforming community?

I am here to tell about having that shared story.

Israel had a shared story. God did great things for them. They experienced his touch throughout their history. Similarly, for the early church, the shared story was the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.

Their message was the death and resurrection of Jesus; their shared story was the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

So we come to the events at that great Passover in the days of King Hezekiah.

The people had fallen away from God.

This was a different from in the days of Elijah, when the people turned away from Yahweh, the Lord, and turned openly to Ba’al.

In Hezekiah’s day, they were the people of Yahweh, but they didn’t live like it. They claimed it, yet they didn’t truly know what they believed. They adulterated their faith by adding pagan ideas and practices.

Think about it. You get e-mails mixing Christianity with astrology and karma and other pagan concepts. Christians live together and don’t see that as inconsistent with their faith. All kinds of things are creeping in and we no longer really see that there is a problem. How different are we from Hezekiah’s times?

In Hezekiah’s day, everyone was affected.

They were slack about practicing their faith. They hadn’t celebrated the Passover as a nation for years. Hezekiah analysed it like this in Chapter 29:

⁶ Our fathers were unfaithful; they did evil in the eyes of the LORD our God and forsook him. They turned their faces away from the LORD’s dwelling place and turned their backs on him. ⁷ They also shut the doors of the portico and put out the lamps. They did not burn incense or present any burnt offerings at the sanctuary to the God of Israel. ⁸ Therefore, the anger of the LORD has fallen on Judah and Jerusalem; he has made them an object of dread and horror and scorn, as you can see with your own eyes. ⁹ This is why our fathers have fallen by the sword and why our sons and daughters and our wives are in captivity. ¹⁰ Now I intend to make a covenant with the LORD, the God of Israel, so that his fierce anger will turn away from us. ¹¹ My sons, do not be negligent now, for the LORD has chosen you to stand before him and serve him, to minister before him and to burn incense.”

He spoke to the priests and leaders, because they had to be the first.

That applies to us all. Don’t look to the pastor or leaders and say, “It‘s up to them.” God has made us — you and me — a royal priesthood, a people dedicated to God. It is up to us all. We are leaders for God.

 You will see that the nation was failing on account of its poor spiritual standing.

We all need a plan. We all need a vision. But too often that plan and vision does not arise from a relationship with God. I know a pastor who, for nearly 40 years, has always resigned when he sees an increase in membership. The thing is that his eyes are always on his own reputation. He can’t see that he is using his churches, and I am sure that he can’t see that this policy has never really achieved much for him. He’s known as the man who moves around the mid–sized churches.

God wants people who, first and foremost, are devoted to himself.

When the church in Antioch wanted to know God’s will, they fasted and prayed and then did what seemed good to the Holy Spirit and themselves. Holy Spirit first.

In Chapter 30 of 2 Chronicles, the nation is ready to worship, The temple is cleansed out. The priests are ready to do God’s will, and they call the people together. We read,

^{2CH 30:1} Hezekiah sent word to all Israel and Judah and also wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasseh, inviting them to come to the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem and celebrate the Passover to the LORD, the God of Israel.

Consider this truth.

If we are priests to God, if we function as priests, bringing the needs ot the people to the Lord, who are the people we must call back to celebration?

It is not the people of Marrickville. This is not about evangelism.

No gentiles were called to the Passover celebration. They called together the weak and fallen Israelites. They called together the circumcised, the people of God.

Cleanse ourselves, then call our own people together. There are people who have been part of us, who have a genuine, personal faith, but have abandoned us. They decided that not enough was happening. They felt that they were too well known in a small group like ours. They felt that we were too close, and they would not be able to break into true fellowship with us. Or they were just wearied and worn, and they have given up for the time being.

We are priests who are not ignorant of what it is like to struggle. We have battled with sickness, with injury, with disappointments, with few successes and many failures. We have sustained the attacks of the evil one. We have been tempted and almost fallen, or maybe we have fallen and fear we can never rise again.

We understand. The priests of ancient Israel were exactly the same. They had had to consecrate themselves before they could minister to others. They had to return to God. They knew the pathway of repentance.

So the message was carried around:

“People of Israel, return to the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, that he may return to you who are left, who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. ⁷ Do not be like your fathers and brothers, who were unfaithful to the LORD, the God of their fathers, so that he made them an object of horror, as you see. ⁸ Do not be stiff-necked, as your fathers were; submit to the LORD. Come to the sanctuary, which he has consecrated forever. Serve the LORD your God, so that his fierce anger will turn away from you.

It was a call to return and find grace and mercy.

Do you feel there is little point in trying again? Have you tried and nothing has happened? Are you reluctant to try again, in case you fail?

Sometimes we even sabotage ourselves. We do try again, but we don’t put our heart into it, we don’t do it properly. We know it won’t work, and it doesn’t.

We are like the disciples who toiled all night and caught nothing. Jesus said, “Try on the other side of the boat.” But they didn’t want to. They said they had tried all night. But, when they obeyed, they caught a great shoal of fish.

I am sure that Hezekiah wondered if his efforts would work. Would the people come? Not even a king can make people come if they don’t want to.

But they came. A great crowd came.

And they celebrated the passover.

You know your Bibles. You know that the Passover lamb speaks to us of Jesus, our Passover. He is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

These people came so that all their sin could be taken away. They came to re–affirm their covenant`relationship with the Lord. They came to stand together as the people of God.

What does the Psalmist say?

Ps 133: 1 How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity,

But it was not enough for them to come together. They had to be dealt with their own sin and failure.

So we read,

17 Since many in the crowd had not consecrated themselves, the Levites had to kill the Passover lambs for all those who were not ceremonially clean and could not consecrate their lambs to the LORD.

They could not cleanse themselves. They could not deal with their own sin, and the sacrifice had to be made for them.

They were unclean, and actually broke the ceremonial law, yet God was good to them, he was gracious to them. They ate and were healed.

And so we read,

 ^{2CH 30:21} The Israelites who were present in Jerusalem celebrated the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days with great rejoicing, while the Levites and priests sang to the LORD every day, accompanied by the LORD’s instruments of praise.

This celebration was so good, God’s blessing was so clear, that they celebrated for another week.

²⁶ There was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the days of Solomon son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. ²⁷ The priests and the Levites stood to bless the people, and God heard them, for their prayer reached heaven, his holy dwelling place.

It was heaven on earth for that entire fortnight. The people put things right with God, and they restored the worship, and God’s blessing was upon them all.

CONCLUSION

Do we need more than that for ourselves?

Our church is not blessed.

I want to say clearly that there are several reasons.

I will begin with myself.

I believe that what has been said recently is quite misleading — I won’t go any further than that. Yet there is truth in it. You don’t get “good value for money”. You don’t know how enormously frustrated I am. My daytime availability is very restricted. I see things falling apart, and can’t quite get to them. The work I do outside the church is far from being “my thing.”

That frustration leads to depression. Depression means immobilisation. That damages my spiritual life, and has for a long while.

But, as a church, our spiritual life is not in good repair, either. We are nice, we are friendly, we care about each other; but we don’t have close fellowship, we don’t pray much together, we don’t plan well together.

I keep saying, “We must have the same commitment to mission that the Greens and Socialists have to political change.” They plan. They get together and work through everything. But we hope something will turn up.

Much of this goes back a long way. When I came here, it was enormously difficult to get anything achieved. Some people just resisted change. Even those who were frustrated that things didn’t change, still didn’t want to have things different. That has become the culture of this church.

We are failing, and, after I began writing this, I heard that John and Cat have left us. It’s another symptom.

We can’t expect that someone else will make it all happen. It is up to us. We can’t hope someone else will pay our bills. What about some initiative of our own? We have killed our own initiatives, hoping someone else will do it.

It is a time for us to repent.

It is a time us to repair the temple, to cleanse out the rubbish, to retake the initiative under God. If we don’t do it, and if we don’t do it quickly, what is left will crash down and there will be no help.

You have seen Sister Act. You remember how they got together and cleaned up the place and made music together, and became a true community? That’s what we need, more than anything else.

I want us to pray until heaven comes down. I want us to plan until we know where we are going. I want us to meet to become a team, not to hold meetings.

We have no time: we must begin now.

Let’s begin praying.

AMEN

¹ Quoted in John Wesley the Methodist, Chapter VIII – Revival Preaching,
Wesley Centre On Line, http://wesley.nnu.edu/john_wesley/methodist/ch8. htm

© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)