Bible Teaching

Calvary Temple Teaching Library

Mighty in Prayer Pt.2

I was talking with someone yesterday up at the gym. He asked me a very interesting question; he said, "Has your Christian life always been a steady incline? Are you always just going up?" I just laughed and shared with them the basics: Of course, our lives are always in constant flux and cycling; we have highs, and we have lows. But my lows are higher, amen, and my highs are higher, praise God, as I come to the knowledge of God. But every one of us is growing, we've all experienced those different valleys and the mountaintops: the times of God's special visitation. But the good news is: the Lord's the same, amen? He doesn't change. When you feel low, God's the same; when you're high, God's the same. Don't worry about anything; just rest. When you're too high, He'll make you low, amen? And when you're low, He'll pick you up and strengthen you, and set your feet on a rock, praise God. So we just rejoice in that, and that there is peace in the times of our valleys. I was just sharing with him: Actually, right now, I'm at a very low time in my life. I'm under a lot of spiritual warfare and I'm battling, but that doesn't change the promises of God; it doesn't change anything I expect--the great power of hope, amen? You see, what I know is: God's always brought me through. That's what I know; that's what I rest in; that's why there's no panic. You just keep doing what you know to do, and for everything there is a season; there's a time to sow and a time to reap; there's a time for weeping and a time for rejoicing. Those would be good lyrics for a song, wouldn't they? So, we just thank God for all of His great promises, and we rest in those; and I encouraged our brother that, if we're not weary in well doing, in due season we will reap if we don't faint, praise God, and that's God's promise to us (Galatians 6:9).

Let's turn to Second Kings; we want to continue talking about the necessity of an effectual prayer life. We talked about the need for prayer as it pertains to evangelism, and we want to continue to emphasize that throughout this year--the need to let our light shine, to be the salt of the earth, to stir ourselves up and know and believe that if we go forth weeping bearing precious seed, we'll doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing the sheaves with us (Psalm 126:6). It's who we are as the ambassadors of Christ; we go out and are absolutely aware that we cannot help but speak of the things we've seen and heard (Acts 4:20); what we've heard in secret, the Scripture says, we'll declare them from the housetops (Matthew 10:27). But we need to realize that in this effectual prayer life, as we're praying the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers--meaning, "Send forth me, Lord." Don't pray for others to go; pray for you to go, to be strengthened, to adorn yourselves in the full armor of God, prayerfully believing that God will make a way for you to let your light shine--then realize this: there's going to be opposition. The enemy is not going to sit back and let you determine in your heart to be a soul-winner, and everything just continue along smoothly, with just a great time of transition into evangelism in your life. You are going to be opposed! In that opposition you're going to know the great presence of God and the great power of God.

We're going to take a few sessions to study the life of a man who was a great prayer warrior, chosen of God to represent Him in a time of darkness, spiritually, just like in this nation. A man whom God raised up and placed His Spirit upon, when everyone else around him seemed to be compromising with the world, a lot like today. So many are professing to be believers and naming the name of the Lord, but my question is: What god are you talking about; and who is this "Jesus" you're making reference to, because I don't recognize him; He's not the same Jesus of the Bible. We're living in a society of religion but not genuine Christianity. We're living in a society that is in a post-Christian era, not only post in that the Christian era has lost its influence, but post in that it is no longer appreciated, not just not practiced. It's not that Christianity no longer [represents] the dominant mores of our society, but it's in opposition to the new ideology of our society in our generation. There's an opposing; there's a war, [with an army] that's been set out against those who would stand in faith and those who would represent the Kingdom of Light, so we need to know how to pray; and this man was in an era just like that. What's interesting is that, in the midst of this, he made a stand for God, and God prospered him, and the greatest temptation he had was his prosperity, not the onslaught of Sennacherib, not even the apostasy of the false priests and prophets, but the prosperity and the willingness to be recognized by the world: a value system that began to seek recognition of the world. That's the spirit we need to protect ourselves from in this generation.

Second Kings, Chapter 19, verse 19: the prayer of Hezekiah. We want to talk about Hezekiah for a few sessions, and this classic verse: "Now therefore, O Lord our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only." I want to set that up for this study to show you what the real central theme of our praying should be: THE GLORY OF GOD. It's seeking the glory of God, not just our deliverance, not our ease, not our comfort, not our prosperity, not trying to establish our own agenda. We all have plans and ideas that we think would be great for us and for our children; but seeking the glory of God that the nations would know that thou alone art God, are you jealous for that today in this generation? Do you want God to be glorified? You know, everything around us is seeking to steal from the glory of God; we've talked about it so many times in the past: medical science; the financial system and the way it's set up today with the super abundance of credit, to where everybody is living four or five times beyond their own comfort-place economically, so far in debt as a nation. Thank God we are not a people like that; we don't live beyond our means; we're trusting God, and living on what God has provided us with; but the rest of this country is not doing that, so it makes for a very perilous time; it makes it very difficult for you to live by faith and live on what God's provided you, instead of living like everybody else. What you need to understand is: to go way beyond what God has provided you, to live on credit, to live on borrowing (this system of borrowing), and making yourself bigger than you are, is judging God. It's just saying that God doesn't know what He's doing; God should not have put me in this position. Man's methods are better. "But godliness with [say it] contentment is [what?] great gain" (1 Timothy 6:6). See, this is where we have been called, as a people, to live by faith. We're a people who are called to live for the glory of God. What I have, God has given me, not Citibank; God has given me! Can you say that? Can you go out and make your boast in the Lord and say, "I don't live like the rest of you live; God is my source, praise God"? Whether it's economics, whether it's medical science, whether it's the ideologies or philosophies we are facing today, what's really at stake, beloved, is the glory of God; that's what we should be jealous for; that's what we're praying to protect; that's why we're asking God to make us proficient in the spiritual weapons of God, this weaponry that can go out and destroy the works of the enemy, that can cause us to stand. When everybody else is cowering, we take that sling and those five smooth stones, and we go out against the giants of this land. "Who art thou, you uncircumcised [Philistine]; who are you to defy the army of God?" "If you're going to go out in this warfare, you'd better take this Citibank card; you'd better take all these pills; you'd better take all of this ideology; you'd better take the strength of the horses and chariots of Egypt; and here, you'd better put on King Saul's armor." We stand and say, "I haven't been proven in any of that! All I know is to worship God, and I'm going out there to worship God. All I know is that when a need arises, the anointing of God has come upon me, and I've delivered God's sheep from the lion and from the bear" (1 Samuel 17), amen? Who are you today as a warrior of God, an ambassador; what weapons do you use? Do they bring glory to God; are they God's weaponry; is it God's methodology? Or are our lives, our conversations, our ambitions, pretty much like everybody else's, indistinguishable from those around us; or is there that hunger we were talking about earlier this morning for more of Jesus, His presence, the going on, the pressing on, that we would be conformed to the full image of Jesus Christ?

So let's go back to the book of Kings and the book of Chronicles, and do a little bit of study in this man's life. It's a very interesting study we have here on Hezekiah, and you can go back to Second Kings. Second Chronicles gives a little more detail concerning the kings of Judah at this particular time, but I want to set a little bit of the environment out of the book of Kings and understand where we are: this is a very dark time in the history of God's chosen people. There's been the separation of Israel, the ten northern tribes, from Judah. As you've read through these books of Kings and Chronicles, it's interesting: sometimes it's hard to keep up with who's who, isn't it; and what kingdom they're in, and the chronology of all of these things; so if you have a little bit of trouble with that, don't worry about it, everybody does. But there are some very helpful outlines so you can see who are the contemporaries. One of the interesting things to do (and we might even share a little bit of this information as we go on) is to not only see who are the contemporary kings of each kingdom, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom of Judah, but who were the prophets ministering at that time. One of the things that people get mixed up, too, is that there were contemporary prophets ministering to the two distinct kingdoms, and saying different things. There was a different word to Israel than there was to Judah being given at the same time, both of them needing a visitation from God, but for different reasons. God's speaking two things to the church today: He's speaking one thing to a big majority of professed Christendom, but I want to tell you, people like ourselves, not only here in America but around the world, people like us who have hearts for God, who are pursuing God, who are jealous for the Scriptures, there are prophets who are speaking to us because, frankly, we need a visitation from God also, amen? We've been vexed by the world; we've been polluted; we've become apathetic; many of God's people are in peril, and prior to the great day of His visitation. So, we want to see if we can find ourselves somewhere in these passages, and identify where we are as a people, and where we are as His representatives in the midst of this onslaught of the world's system, Sennacherib, the powers of darkness.

So, Chapter 18 of Second Kings: we talk a little bit here about King Hezekiah. One of the first things I want you to see here is this: he was 25 years old. Let me see how many of you in here this morning are between 20 and 30 years old; lift your hands up, 20 and 30 years old, lift them up real high so we can see. Okay, look at that; go ahead and put those down. How many of you are under 20? Let me see your hands. God wants to use you, amen? We talked before about God's hand coming upon the young Mary, who was the mother of Jesus. We talk about the youth of David, and his zeal of worship and praise, and his desire to press in and know God. I want to tell you something: Young David would not trade those times of solitude, of hearing the voice of God in the wind blowing, of seeing the majesty of God in the heavens as they declared His glory, for all of your X-boxes, malls, and theatres. He had a treasure that so many in this generation don't know anything about: getting alone with God, depending upon the presence of God! Whether it's the three Hebrew children--the young men there, the young Daniel whom God elevated in that nation, the young man Joseph who was a man of integrity--"I can't do this! It would cause me to feel guilty, and I would just be miserable all of my life." "I can't do this; I might get caught. I've got a position of power here, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. People with multiple degrees, people who are movers and shakers, aren't in this position that I'm in. I can be CEO; I can be chairman of the board here in no time. I can't do this and take any chances of messing up my career opportunities."--No, Joseph had integrity: "How can I do this and sin against my God?" (Genesis 39:9). It wasn't about getting caught; it was about honoring God. It wasn't about what he might lose: it was about what he could offer to God: a heart, a life, totally surrendered to Him. God wants to use young men and young women, in our generation especially, when so many are given over.

As I was driving down the road the other day, I don't listen to a lot of the secular radio but I was driving late at night the other night and turned it on. Two things will kind of keep me awake: if I can get talk radio, and listen to everybody be experts, and just kind of laugh at them, mock them, knowing that I have the answer, that's one way that I entertain myself and to stay awake; the other is that I'll listen to oldies stations. I was listening to one of the oldies stations and heard that Lou Rawls had died. They talked about how this young man was one of the first ones to really become successful in crossing over from Christian gospel music into the secular realm: he finally made it big! He left the church and the world accepted him. That's the mentality that so many have; and, you'll see, that's what almost destroyed Hezekiah.

So we find out that this young man, at 25 years of age, was being placed in a position of prominence in the midst of decadence; both nations, both kingdoms, the northern tribes, Israel and Judah were at different stages of apostasy at this time. But the Scripture says in Chapter 18 that Hezekiah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. Now, if you go back one chapter, to Chapter 17, the Scripture says, "In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria..." and he was in Israel, the Scripture says, for nine years, this northern tribe. In the midst of Samaria, they brought in a lot of refugees and many of the nations were brought into Samaria to occupy that land for one reason: that there would be no commonness, no community, no "one heart and one mind;" there is strength in that. We were at the ball game the other night, the basketball game, and I happened to be sitting next to the secretary of that Christian school we were playing. I asked, "How many people do you have here in this high school?" She said that the high school was just under 400 students. I asked, "How many, total, do you have in the elementary schools?" She said, "We have two elementary schools and some preschools." I asked, "Well how many kids, total?" She said, "Over one thousand. There are 160 churches represented in those thousand kids." The first thing that came to my mind was, "Dear God, how do you get anything done, and what do you teach in chapel, do you teach Calvinism or Arminianism? Do you teach pre-trib, post-trib, amillenialism, postmillennialism? What do you teach? There are 160 different belief systems in there!" Do you know what it produces? Weakness; confusion; every man doing what is right in his own eyes, as it was in the day of the judges. This was the understanding, the knowledge, of the secular also, so this is what is being done in Samaria. Now, remember what Samaria is: Samaria was a main lifeline, strategically, to control that area. It's where the military and all the supplies would come through; it was a very strategic place, if you were going to control that region. There were many reasons why this was being done. But, Scripture says, God brought judgment upon that area, and lions were coming in and killing the people, which I thought was interesting. They believed in regional gods. It was the philosophy of that day: there were gods of the mountains, gods of the valleys, gods of the desert, gods of the rainforest. This multiplicity of gods and regional gods was the primary belief system of that day. It sure was not monotheism: one God, one Lord, one church, one baptism. So they said, "You know, the problem is that the god of this region is ticked off, so these lions are coming and causing havoc. What we need to do is bring that religion back in here and it will smooth everything over. We need to have the dogma, the religion, back; enough religion to keep peace." The Scripture goes on, and says in verse seven: "For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen..." This is why they were under the bondage they found themselves in at this moment. And, it says, "...The children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. And they set them up images and groves...and wrought wicked things [verse 11 says] and served idols, whereof the Lord had said [in verse 12] unto them, 'Ye shall not do this thing.' Yet the Lord testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, 'Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers...' Notwithstanding [verse 14] they would not hear, but hardened their necks."

Where are the prophets today? Who is crying out against the mockery of the glory of God? Oh, I heard just the other day where Christians were gathering together nationally, they were going to meet in Philadelphia and there was this big push toward the appointment of the new Supreme Court justice, and all the big media ministers were behind this. Because, you know, "if we don't have the right people in the Supreme Court the church doesn't stand a chance." What are we trusting in today? The voice of our generation is the voice of the world's weapons: prominence through celebrity, power through politics. "Surely prayer will not avail, surely the gospel has no power and sufficiency to redeem; we're ashamed of the gospel, that's archaic, that message; we can't talk about the blood of Jesus; we can't talk about the cross; we can't talk about sanctified living, separatist-type living; we can't talk about holiness; this is the twenty-first century!" Yet, in that day there were prophets and seers who stood up and said, "The God that delivered us from Egypt is going to allow you to be taken back into bondage." Jeremiah's whole message was: "If you don't repent, if you don't pull these idols down, if you don't come out from among them and be separate, you're going to go into captivity. You've come to a fork in the road; choose the old paths." Babylon was waiting.

This is the precursor to that, and yet verse 14 says, "Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant... And they left all [verse 16, look at this] the commandments of the Lord their God [what a powerful statement!], and made them molten images, even two calves [these two calves became the idols for Samaria] and made a grove [for their worship, and verse 17 says] And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger." How long do you think God is going to tolerate the dabbling of the church in the world's methods? You know the Scripture says, "[God] will not always strive with man" Genesis 6:3). Father is patient; He's kind; He's longsuffering. He's not the God that's sitting up there, the ogre, waiting for somebody to make one mistake so He can smash them; but I want to tell you something: It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, amen (Hebrews 10:31)? Our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29); He is a holy God; He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all, amen (1 John 1:5)? That means you! If we are abiding in Him, there is no place for darkness to remain in our lives. I want to tell you something: If you are abiding in Him, many of the things in your life right now are going to be gone, as God continues to consume you with His glory. Things you are holding onto, specifically, purposefully, and things you don't even know shouldn't be there, are going to be gone. Can you say praise God for that, as He continues to illuminate us, revive us, enlighten us with His presence, intoxicate us with His glory?

But, as a whole, God's church--us... You know, it's a very difficult thing to say sometimes because it sounds like boasting or bragging, but it's just a fact. I would not say we are the best, but I'll tell you what, we are in the high percentage of those who are pressing in to know God in His church. I'm sure there are folks better than us, but I want to tell you something: We are up there toward the top in our zeal and in our pursuit--and we are messed up, and God wants to visit us, amen?

So this generation Hezekiah was living in, at this time when they were not wanting to retain God, as Romans one says, God gave them over to reprobate minds, so they would believe lies. I want to tell you something: If you keep justifying and holding on, God will let you believe that. The thing you love, it will come out of your nostrils (Numbers 11). God will turn them over, yet all the while it's not His will, it's not His desire. Listen to the decline of these people: They were causing their children to pass through the fires; they were offering them up to the idols of this world. I watch parents today, professed Christians, offering their kids up to the idols of this world's system, encouraging them in the pursuit of the world's treasures, making a way for it, handing it over to them, destroying them with prosperity, destroying them with secular humanism in the way that seems right to a man, as we heard in the utterance this morning. There's no new thing under the sun.

"Therefore the Lord [verse 18] was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only." Hallelujah! Aren't you glad you belong to the tribe of Judah? Aren't you glad for the Great Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, and a holy remnant? Perceived Christendom, Israel, the perceived representatives of God, the visible prominent church, and an obscure tribe, a holy remnant, a holy nation, a people separate, distinct, unique, hated, mocked, and all nations including their own people conspiring to destroy them. Which tribe are you in today? Who are we, in the midst of this story?

"Also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel..." Now they are beginning to be polluted by whom? Not the world, but their own people. These are our people; these are our relatives; this is our blood; these are the people who have historically represented God; these are the people who can all trace their lineage back to those who came through the Red Sea; these are the people who walked over the dry riverbed of Jordan; these are the people whose relatives walked throughout the region of the wilderness and were fed with manna; that's their history; those are their roots! Now they are prospering; the world's recognizing them; they are being invited to the White House dinners; they are on national media. These are the ones who are recognized of the world as being successful; they are the ones who are building all these great convention centers. Yes, these are the ones who go on Larry King [Live] and deny the lordship of Jesus. What's being said here? Don't think for a moment that we are not being influenced by that. Oh, we know in our doctrine that it's wrong, but we keep looking, and we're seeing their prosperity and their prominence, and we're seeing their acceptance, and we're being bombarded on every side at work by seeker friendliness and by tolerance and all of these things, and it seems like: "I'm the only guy out here whom everybody hates, and when I stand up for the Word of God every voice says, 'No, that's wrong!'"

We had to endure the homecoming celebration at that ball game, and as soon as they all came out there, I told Greer who was going to be the [homecoming] king. How many of you knew that right from the get-go? Did you? I said, "I can tell you who the king's going to be: the politically correct guy." Sure enough, it was the exchange student from Nigeria or Congo, wherever he was from. It dictates everything! He had been in the school for 18 months. These other kids had been there for 11 years, faithfully serving, and somebody who's an exchange student from wherever comes in for 18 months: who knows who this person is? It's just the way the system operates. How do we fit? What's God calling us to do in the midst of all of this? At this particular moment Judah was being vexed: Judah was being influenced by its apparent prosperity and [the world's] acceptance and the fact that they were under a pseudo-peace now because they had been conquered, because they had bowed their knee. Verse 20 says, "And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight. For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king: and Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord, and made them sin a great sin." They separated themselves [from God], and denied [His] lordship.

Verse 25 says, "And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the Lord: therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them." The Assyrians said, "Well, the nations that had been removed from here, this was their turf, so we need to restore that religion, we need to realize that this conflict is coming because of a conflict of deities." So, verse 27 says, "the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them [now I want you to see the phrasing here because it is important] the manner of the god of the land:" the doctrine; not relationship, not obedience, but the dogma. "Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord." Sounds good, doesn't it? Doesn't that sound good? We've got a priest in here now, and he's teaching them right doctrine. I want to tell you something: You can go within 10 miles of this place and find good doctrine many times over. There are a lot of churches right here in this vicinity, we can almost throw stones and hit some of them, that are teaching good doctrine. Doctrine is easy to find; living epistles are another matter; a people holy and separate unto God is another matter.

When the Apostle spoke, he said, "Study to show thyself approved unto God, workmen that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15). What he was talking about, rightly dividing, in the Greek means to cut straight through, not just to identify issues or truths, but to the application. The rightly dividing of the Word of God is the proper application of the Word of God, not the knowledge, not the doctrine. What are you doing? How do we know you are different? How are you applying this? Are you doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves? And so they "came and taught them how they should fear the Lord. Howbeit every nation made gods of their own." Remember who these folks are; when we talk about every nation here, I want you to understand it this way: every denomination, every different thought process. What are the major doctrines? We've talked about them before, the different philosophies of the first century: Gnosticism and Pharisaicalism (the Judaizers) were the two main opponents to the pure gospel that were bringing pollution into the church. Today we would call it Calvinism and Arminianism; both of them are wrong; they are both extremes; both can find a basis in the Word of God. The truth is [found] if you amalgamate them, and then properly apply that which you can amalgamate and not the extremes, not the polarization. The same thing is happening here; so when we talk about the different nations, don't get confused in our teaching, in our purpose, by thinking we're talking about the secular. I'm talking about the different Christian perspectives. There was a general teaching to where everybody would say, "We believe in Jesus." Do you run into that all the time? "We believe in Jesus; can't we just agree on our acknowledgment that Jesus is Lord, and forget about everything else?" Well, what does "Jesus is Lord" mean to you? Who is this "Jesus" whom you're talking about? Did your "Jesus" come to bring peace or a sword? Is your "Jesus" a Jesus of tolerance, or one who is splitting houses down the middle: three against two and two against three? Is your "Jesus" one who is here not to judge or offend anybody, or is your "Jesus" the cornerstone, the rock of offense, that people stumble over constantly? It's not enough to stumble over Him: you must fall on Him and be broken, or He'll fall on you and grind you to powder, amen?

Who is this "Jesus" these people are naming, who is this guy? Who is this get-rich-quick "Jesus?" Who is this political "Jesus"? Who is this "Jesus" of tolerance? I don't know him. Oh, I hear you naming His name, and I hear you saying that you prayed a prayer and asked Him to save you from your sins, but my question is: if you are ashamed of Him and His commandments then He's going to be ashamed of you; if you deny Him before men then He's going to deny you before the Father; so who is this "Jesus" you are talking about? We're never going to be accepted, beloved, so don't be sucked in by this "I'm a believer, I believe in Jesus, why don't we just leave it at that." Leave it that nothing! I want to find out who this "Jesus" is whom you are talking about. There is no fellowship between light and darkness: I don't know who you are. At best you are leaven that's going to leaven the whole lump; at worst you're a wolf, you are a false prophet, you are preying upon the household of faith. But here is this priest, and he is bringing this central theme; in our case this central theme is Jesus. But, each person believed what he wanted to believe, the Scripture said. "Look, you believe what you believe, and I'll believe what I believe." No! We've got to believe the same thing, because there is only one truth, and it doesn't hinge upon our perception: That's truth, amen; "Thy Word is truth." Let's go to the Word of God and find out what's right, and one of us is going to have to change--or maybe both of us. All I know is I base everything I do upon the Word of God, and if you can show me I'm wrong and you can show me something else, I'm going to do it; how about you? That's what we fellowship around.

"Every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt." Then you find in this coalition. Look here, and we all know what this is a type of: "And the men of Babylon [brought their god], the men of Cuth [brought their god], the Avites [brought their doctrine of burning] their children in the fire," offering them up as human sacrifices. I want you to see verse 32; mark it in your Bibles, get it in your notes, hear what this is saying to us: "So they feared the Lord, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places. [Now watch verse 33] They feared the Lord, and served their own gods," what a phrase, "They feared the Lord, and served their own gods!" Write it down; memorize it; internalize it. They had the doctrine; they said they believed; they would name the name of Jesus; they went to church--and served their own gods. Those gods that were "after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence. Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the Lord, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel [the prince of God]; with whom the Lord had made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them."

"Well since we can't serve other gods; since we can't leave the Lord..." You know who is the greatest expert at this? The Catholic Church: "Since we can't leave God, let's just include all the other gods in our midst and attach Christian terms and celebrations to these; let's embrace all of the other religions." So here we are, and we'll stand back and look at Roman Catholicism, and we can easily identify many of the errors, but why don't we identify them in our own midst? What are the gods we've brought in from our own cultures, our own family ties, our own ambition, our dreams that we won't let die, our reputations? It's the pride that causes us to believe that, through the doctrine that we are kings and priests, somehow we all stand in equal revelation; we don't. So what we understand here is the degree of the pollution that had come into their midst, and how, from Israel, it had begun to affect Judah. Now we have these people blatantly saying they fear God, but they are serving their own idols. We run into it in the workplace constantly. But in the midst of all of this, while Judah is getting sucked up into this thing, Hezekiah is put into place, and Hezekiah begins to remove these groves and these high places, and verse 4 says, "He removed the high places, and broke the images, and cut down the groves, and broke in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made." This [brazen serpent] was a good thing; we all remember the story of the brazen serpent. Jesus made reference to it: He said, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up...And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me" (John 3:14, 12:32). Jesus referred to this brazen serpent. But look what happened: instead of worshipping the Lord who delivered them, they are worshipping the emblem. How many people today worship Christianity instead of Jesus? How many people worship the ideology, the doctrine, instead of the Lord? How many people would gladly keep the prayer schedules and the dogma, and attend all of the services in lieu of that quiet place David knew, that Moses knew as he wandered in the desert, having to deal with his choice, having to deal with his own humanity, having to deal with his perceived failure? "I thought I was the deliverer. How...Did I fail? Did God fail? I was going to be king, and now I'm a shepherd" (Exodus 2). You don't think he wrestled with those things? He's a man just like you. You don't think he had fears and doubts? When God encountered him in that burning bush, he said, "Look: I've already tried this thing. I'll tell you what: you've got the wrong guy; I already went; I tried and I failed. You're going to have to get somebody else. Besides that, I can't speak." "Take off your shoes; you're on holy ground. I know what you are, but you don't have a clue about what I'm going to make you. Everything you were you became in Egypt, and I can't use Egypt; but I'm going to make you a new vessel." Amen? "What's that that you have in your hand?" "It's just a staff; it's just a shepherd's staff." "It's sufficient if you'll offer it up to Me." The world's offering you all of their ideology and they mock, but we stand before them with our weapons. They mock our sling, they mock our staff, they mock our silence as we walk around their walls, but they are terrified when we shout the glory of God and their walls come down "because greater is He that is in [us] than he that is in the world" (1 John 4:4).

Hezekiah, in the midst of that environment, is being challenged. He said, "Do you see all those religious artifacts; do you see all that the people used to trust in; do you see that which they thought was religion, all that they thought was honoring God? Destroy it!" So he "broke into pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for unto those days the children of Israel [were worshipping before it and] did burn incense to it." We're not coming to God in the old methods. It says he, Moses, had trusted the Lord; so after him was none like him (Deuteronomy 34:10), and Hezekiah wanted that spirit; he was imbibing it, not of the brazen serpent, but of the God of the burning bush. "For he clave to the Lord, and departed not from following him, but kept his commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him; and he prospered whithersoever he went..." And in the visitation of God (we'll end with this for this morning) one thing began to happen, and it will happen to you: the Spirit will rise up in you against the kings of this world; the things that you used to love, you'll hate; the thing the majority is seeking, you'll despise. But there has to be a destroying of the religious methods that preceded, not only a departure from the ways of Israel, the calves of Samaria, the idolatry to where they feared the Lord but served their own gods, but also many of the religious traditions. As I end with this for this morning, I want you to see one thing: Do you want to know why this generation was worshipping that brazen serpent? It's because they had only heard the story; they didn't experience it. I want to encourage you today: as many as looked were saved and healed. Remember the story of the brazen serpent: God was sending fiery serpents into their midst. They were being judged because of their [discontentment], and God sent this judgment upon them. Then the cry went forth, and they said, "Lord, deliver us." He said, "Make a brazen serpent and lift it up, and as many as look will be saved" (Numbers 21:5-8). What are you looking to today; what's your trust in? Where do you go when trials come, when trouble comes? What's your first thought? Do you revert back to your own strength? Do you revert back to your old nature of Jacob, and start trying to con people and make your own way, or do you realize, after wrestling with God, and you come back and raise before your own consciousness the testimony of your limp, that God has made you a new man, and that you are a prince with God today? This is the message God has for us, I believe, in this hour. We've got a lot of ground to cover here in the life of Hezekiah. It's going to be a good study; we'll be on it for another two or three sessions, at least. I'd encourage you to go back and read the rest of these chapters, then read the testimony in Isaiah 38; also, in Second Chronicles, you'll want to cruise a little bit through Chapters 29 and 30, through that area. Then just ask Father, "Lord, here am I; send me. Use me in this generation." Oh you're not going to be a king of a nation, but men, you do have a kingdom; are there any idols in your kingdom, in your household? You are going to answer for your kingdom. Are your children and your children's children going to be raised up serving Molech? Are they going to be offered up, or will we as the prophet of old say, "As for me and my house, we're serving God" (Joshua 24:15)?

Father, make it real in our lives today. Help us to search our own hearts, to look into these principles and realize what Hezekiah realized: In the midst of all of this there is only one way to experience victory, and that's through a prayer life, a life that divorces ourselves from all of our own strength and reliance in the broken reed of Egypt, and to seek only the Lord: "Seek Me early, seek Me while I may be found" (Proverbs 8:17, Isaiah 55:6). "O Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come" (Psalm 65:2). We have a very present help in trouble. Make our first response prayer, a crying out for Your glory--not our deliverance, Your glory--that You would be seen in the midst of it, that You would answer prayer and the nations would know that You are alive, that Your Word is truth. It's our desire, Lord, that You would be all in all, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Let's stand before the Lord this morning. As Gary plays for us for just a moment, and we survey where we find ourselves in the midst of this great war, there are two brands of Christianity today, the Northern and the Southern. You say, "Well we're in Virginia, we must be Southerners." "No, I was born in Georgia; anything north of Atlanta is the North." You see, that's what your roots tell you; that's what natural man tells you. The problem is, those folks believe it. We're going to see a very interesting pattern in Hezekiah's life, as you read through this thing: The greater the war, the closer to God; the greater the prosperity, the more carnality. How do we then prosper, but not be destroyed in our prosperity? By creating conflict; in your prosperity, create conflict: set out against the enemy. Find some way to use your prosperity for the glory of God, to bring down principalities and powers, to oppose and to expose the glory of God to the nations. But don't bring them into your midst and brag on what you have; brag on the God who gave it to you. Let's sing it together, "Hear My Cry, O God."

Hallelujah! Lord, we come to You, and our eyes are upon You. Bring us to that confidence in which we would stand, like our Lord, and say, "I know that when I pray, My Father hears me because I am praying for Your glory" (John 11:42). We're praying, Lord, that Your will would be done in our midst. So our eyes are upon You, and we just ask that You'd be made big in this place and in our lives, in Jesus' name. Amen, amen. Turn to somebody before you go and say, "Men ought always to pray." Amen. Go in peace; God's love go with you.

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