2 Chronicles 29: 10-19

Hezekiah was ‘Mister Motivator’. He had credibility as a leader because of what he was. What the leader is in their character is so much more important than what he/she says. Words are not unimportant but they must be backed up by ‘works’. If there is a ‘credibility gap’ between our talk and our walk; if our lips are going one way while our lives are moving another, then lack of authenticity will tell against us. So, verse eleven follows not only numerically, but also logically and spiritually from verse ten. If you’re going to call for great commitment then you need to give it yourself. It’s not good enough to merely bark orders because you’re the leader. You must show yourself prepared to do what you’re asking other people to do.

I’m not surprised to read in (7): Then these Levites set to work… They did exactly what Hezekiah asked of them (5). They started with themselves (always the starting point). From there they got to work on the temple. (So you want to change the church? Begin with your own heart.

  • They had heard God’s Word (Presumably from the king: verses 15b, 5);
  • They had also heard his call to diligent service (11);
  • But they had also seen his example (10)

Emotions do communicate powerfully. A business man wrote that people can smell commitment a mile off. These leaders must have realised that Hezekiah was serious about heading up a thorough-going reformation. To get anywhere near him was to catch a whiff of smoke! The man was so ‘on fire!!’It was no wonder that he was able to motivate good and capable people and hitch their gifts to the chariot of his godly cause. The Message tells us: The priests started from the inside and worked out; they emptied the place of the accumulation of defiling junk – pagan rubbish that had no business in that holy place – and the Levites hauled it off to the Kidron Valley. They began the Temple cleaning on the first day of the first month and by the eighth day they had worked their way out to the porch – eight days it took them to clean and consecrate The Temple itself, and in eight more days they had finished with the entire Temple complex. The Apostle Paul teaches that a Christian’s body is God’s Temple (1 Corinthians 6:19/20) and that, by inference, there are things that do not belong in it. There is a spiritual equivalent to this cleaning project, as we go to work on ourselves, with God’s help, and remove the stuff that really ought not to be there. It may not all be ‘defiling.’ Maybe some of it is just clutter. But it gets in the way.  From the moment of becoming a Christian you have to look at your life through new eyes. It is no longer yours but God’s. Anything incompatible with that must be hurled in the direction of the rubbish heap.

Cleaning up the temple took time. It can be so with us. A thoroughgoing repentance will be painful, and may not be the thing of a moment. Many years ago I had a friend whose Christianity began when he spent a week praying and weeping over the bad and wrong stuff in his life. He just felt terrible about who he was and how he’d been living. At the end of that week he had no categories to describe what had happened to him; no technical theological jargon to explain it. He just knew he felt clean and was right with His Maker. When someone told him he’d been ‘born again’ he accepted it, but he wouldn’t have used that unfamiliar Biblical language himself. What he did know was that he was forgiven and accepted. Life was far from easy for him, but his face lit up like the midday sun and in his eyes were deep pools of peace. Something real had happened. It took time, but there was a massive clean out.  Prayer: Help me Lord to ‘clean house’ and show me where to start.