2 Chronicles 29:6-11

During last August, just before attending the ‘Global Leadership Summit’ at Willow Creek Church, my wife and I spent approximately twenty four hours in down town Chicago. We managed to fit in a guided tour of both the north and south sides of the city. To my surprise and delight, when we were exploring the south side, the guide pointed out the ‘Moody’ Church and Bible Institute. Not long after this we were shown Hugh Hefner’s former Playboy mansion, then the club where Frank Sinatra and his cronies hung out when they were in town, and also the bullet hole in the façade of a church building left from the Al Capone gangster era! I was struck by the thought that this one humble and simple (in the best sense) man made such an enormous impact on his city, that he is still remembered today. (Of course his influence was even greater than on this one city. He impacted the world as an evangelist: a powerful preacher about Jesus.) It was this same D.L. Moody, I believe, who said, ‘The world is yet to see what God will do with one man who is fully surrendered to Him.’ Then he added, ‘God helping me, I will be that man!’ It appears he was.

I thought about Moody as I was mulling over Hezekiah’s commitment expressed in 2 Chronicles 29:10: Now I intend to make a covenant with the LORD, the God of Israel, so that his fierce anger will turn away from us. In my Bible I have highlighted the words: Now I intend…  As the great Anglican pastor, John Stott, observed, no-one drifts into holiness. Hezekiah wasn’t making a ‘new year’s resolution’ type of thing that would be broken in days, or perhaps weeks. He was making a serious commitment, and he was highly intentional about it.

We have seen in recent days how the people of Judah had turned away from God, and from regular worship in the temple. In fact, the ‘church’ in Hezekiah’s day had closed down. This led to very serious consequences, and this comes across well in The Message, which is a modern paraphrase of the Bible: And because of that, GOD’s anger flared up and he turned those people into a public exhibit of disaster, a moral history lesson – look and read! The Bible repeatedly teaches the principle that we reap what we sow. We do so personally and nationally. There is a lesson to be learned that sin (that tendency in all of us to go our own way rather than God’s), if unchecked, will lead to a car wreck at the bottom of the hill. Ultimately it doesn’t lead anywhere good. It takes us in the direction of pain, misery and loss. (But it was to rescue us from the guilt and power of sin that Jesus came into the world: an event the world has apparently been celebrating recently. I have noticed though that Jesus is not always welcome at His own birthday party! But that’s another subject altogether.)

Hezekiah was appalled at the situation he had inherited. He saw the spiritual danger he and his people were facing, and he was determined to do something about it. He drew a line in the sand. Things were going to change if he had anything to do with it, and he was going to have a lot to do with it: I have decided to make a covenant with the GOD of Israel and turn history around… The Message. One with God is a majority, and Hezekiah intended to be a history maker. Was it Wesley who said something like this, ‘Give me a handful of people who love nothing but God and hate nothing but sin, and we’ll change the world’? It doesn’t take large numbers to make a big difference. It just takes a heartfelt commitment; a life fully given over to God. Someone said: ‘Be the difference you want to see in the world.’

Prayer: Lord, It amazes me how you take very ordinary people and use them in your service. Like Hezekiah, I give what I am and have to you. May I be a difference-maker in your purposes.