This sermon is about the importance of revival and returning to God with a genuine heart. It emphasizes the need for cleansing, consecration, and dealing with idolatry in the house of God. The story of Hezekiah's revival in 2 Chronicles is used as an example of how true revival involves humility, transparency, and a restoration of God's preeminence in our lives.

Again, it's a joy to be with you tonight. I should have the ladies on one side, the men on the other or something, I'm not sure. There are just two solitary saints on this side and everybody on this side. But the Bible says the hypocrites love the utmost seats in the synagogue, and so at least we don't have any hypocrites in the church, and that's a good sign. If you have your Bible with you, if you turn with me to 2 Chronicles and the 29th chapter, and I want us to look at one of the great revivals in the Old Testament, because my heart and I know your heart is to believe God for something more that we've seen. I believe that He's keeping the best wine until the end. The glory of the latter house will be greater than the former, the Bible says. The wheat and the tares will mature together. And so while we're seeing a maturity of evil, I believe God is wanting to bring a maturity of the things of the Spirit of God as well. Somebody described revival as divine disorder or divine chaos. I'm not totally convinced that we want revival, because when it comes, it doesn't normally come the way we want it to come, in a nice, neatly packaged, you know, way that conforms to all our standards and so on. I have my father's library at home, possibly 4,000 or 5,000 books. I'm not sure. I counted floor to ceiling all the way up 8 feet and at least 34 feet of books, whatever that translates into numerically, I'm not sure. But there's two or three shelves on nothing but revival, and I've begun to sort of work my way through a few of them. And, you know, we have the sanitized version in many books on revival. They throw out all the things that we sort of don't agree with or don't sort of fit our particular paradigm, and we have a sanitized version. I get a magazine on revival that comes on a regular basis. They sell one of my father's books and I think some of his tapes. But everything about the revivals that they have in that magazine are all neatly sanitized. You know, nothing was ever done to disturb anybody and so on. That's not what I read about revival. Again, it's normally divine chaos that upsets doctrines and upsets our, you know, decently and in order style. And I'm not really sure that we want it. It may be an embarrassment when it comes. It may change our doctrines. It may do all sorts of things. But nevertheless, this is one of the great revivals in the Old Testament, and I want us to look at it together, if you know the background to this. We are talking about the ministry and the life of Hezekiah. Hezekiah, of course, was the son of Ahaz. Ahaz was one of the most wicked of all kings. You can read about his life there in the previous chapter, chapter 28. He did just about everything that was possible to do that was contrary to the ways of God, turned the entire nation away from worship of Jehovah, erected high places, caused his sons to pass through the fire, did all sorts of abominations. I mean, all you've got to do is just take a few minutes and read it. Verse 19 of that chapter says, The Lord humbled Judah because of Ahaz, king of Israel, for he brought about a lack of restraint in Judah and was very unfaithful to the Lord. And so he brings about a total lack of restraint. He goes into the house of God. He boards up the house of God, closes the place of worship down, and then, of course, eventually he dies and his son assumes the throne. And so, just that very brief background, let's pick it up now in chapter 29. And verse 1, 2 Chronicles 29, verse 1, Hezekiah became king when he was 25 years of age, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem. Verse 2, he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. I believe that's the first key to revival, is when we become God-conscious, not man-conscious, where we are not concerned about what man thinks or what our denomination thinks, about what our board thinks, about what our elders think, and so on. We are more concerned about pleasing God than we are pleasing man. And here was a man that, again, chose to do that which was right in the sight of God. Ultimately, of course, we will stand before the Lord Jesus Christ, not before our denomination, not before our eldership, not before our deacon board or our congregation. We will stand before the Lord Jesus Christ, and so we need to make sure that we're doing that which is right in the sight of the Lord. Verse 3, in the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord, and he repaired them. I want to combine that with verse 17. Now, they began the consecration on the first day of the first month. So let me read it now, joining those two verses together, at least as far as a chronology of dates. In the first year of his reign, in the first month, on the first day, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord, and he repaired them. That's what I call priority. The very first day of his reign, not a week went by, not a month went by, not six months. He doesn't vote for himself a pay increase as our politicians do in the midnight sessions when nobody else is around. He doesn't pass some sort of legislature. He doesn't decree some sort of, you know, the building of some monument to himself or anything else. He has one priority. That priority is to rectify everything that is wrong in the nation of Israel, if you like, if we were to put it in a New Testament setting, to rectify what is wrong in the church. Things are not right in the house of God. He knows that things are not right, and his number one priority before he does anything else, the first day of the first month of the first year of his reign, he goes into the house of God that has been boarded up and closed down, is not operating according to the pattern that God intended it to operate as. And I believe that this, again, is the key to revival when it becomes a priority. It supersedes every other desire, every other purpose. We become consumed with one thing, getting the house of God back into the condition that God intended it to be. And we don't put it off for a week. We don't put it off for a month. We don't put it off for a couple of years. But the very first day that we can do something about it. He was not king prior to this. He didn't have the authority to operate. But as soon as he does, he begins to do what is right, again, in the sight of the Lord. We go back to verse 2. It says he did according to all that his father David had done. I think one of the great tragedies is that this man did not have a father that he could look up to. I am grateful, very grateful, for my own father and fathers in the faith that I've had the opportunity to work with. I worked with a wonderful father figure, gone to be with the Lord now for 15 years as a co-pastor in New Zealand. And I am grateful for those two men that had a major impact into my own life. But here is a man that cannot look to his own father, but at least he finds a role model that he can look to. And he looks back to the life of David and he says, When I become king, I want to be a man of God like David is. We need to find some heroes, don't we? Some men of God. We have a church now that is more interested in the NFL or whatever it is. And you can quote all the players and the scores and who hit this home run. And they can go back years. They've got all sorts of facts and figures and so on. You ask them to turn to the book of Nehemiah or something and they stumble around trying to find it. Who's Nehemiah? You know, who does he play for? It's sad, but it's true. We need once again to get our eyes back onto some of the spiritual heroes, the Westleys and the Finneys and so on and so forth. And here again is a young man, 25 years of age, that says, I want to be like David. I want to do that which is right in the sight of God, according to all that my father David did. And so the first thing he does, again in verse 3, he opens the doors to the house of God. We go back into verse 24, the previous chapter. His father closed the doors of the house of the Lord. He made altars for himself in every corner of Jerusalem. We have too many men making altars for themselves, too many men on ego trips, even in the house of God. And we no longer, again, exalt and magnify the Lord Jesus Christ. In all things He is to have preeminence. And this young man is desirous again of putting God back in His rightful place. And so he opens the doors of the house of the Lord and he repairs them. Now, we're obviously looking at a literal house here in the Old Testament. I want us to look at this in a New Testament concept, excuse me, and look at the spiritual house of God. The Bible says whose house we are. And we need to open our own doors. And we need to have those doors repaired. The Bible says lift up your heads, all you gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in. There are times in our own experience when we need to be open and receptive to what God is doing and open the doors. The Bible says in Revelation, Behold, I stand, excuse me, at the door of knock. If any man open the door, I will come in. This temple has doors. Just as a normal temple, a house, has doors, this temple has doors. Excuse me, I can get a drink of water. Don't know what's going on here. But we need to be, again, in a place where we are open. Those doors, so often we live behind closed doors, don't we? And you cannot penetrate beyond those closed doors. We can live behind doctrinal doors, we can live behind doors of sin, and the doors have to be open. There's a reason the doors have to be open, because He is going, in verse 5, to carry the uncleanness out of the house of God. And the doors, unless the doors are open, thank you, unless those doors are open, we will never take the uncleanness out of the house of God. Now notice something about these doors. He not only opened them, but He repaired them. You see, doors serve a twofold purpose. They permit access, and they prevent access. When you go home tonight, you will open your door, and you will go into your house. It permits you access into your house, your condo, your apartment, wherever it is that you dwell. When you get into your house, being the evening hours, you will close that door, and no doubt lock that door, to prevent access. There are certain things you want in your house, there are certain things you don't want in your house, same is true in the house of God. In other words, the doors were not simply opened and left open, the doors were closed. And I believe, spiritually speaking, this house, whose house we are, the doors need to open and close at certain times. Thank you. Again, be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in. The doors need to be opened. By the same token, the psalmist says, I will set no worthless thing before my nights. In other words, he knew when to close the doors. There were certain things he refused to allow to enter into his life. Job tells us in the middle of the book of Job, he said, I made a covenant with mine eyes not to gaze on a virgin. Here is this man that starts off again as the God-fearing, honoring man, a man of integrity, a man that turned away from evil, and so on and so forth. And that's the beginning, but we are given at least some little sort of cameos into the process that brought that about. Job was not always that sort of a man. He used to go to the house of God by his own confession, and there in the house of God he would be, instead of listening to the word of God, he would be looking at the virgins and feasting his eyes on the flesh that was round about him, if you like, and the Spirit of God obviously brought him under conviction in such a way that he says, I have made a covenant now with mine eyes, I am no longer going to gaze on a virgin. And suddenly in Job's life the doors closed. And so there are times to open doors, there are times to close doors. Again, this is the beginning, these are the steps now that led to one of the great revivals in the Old Testament. I have had the privilege of being in the ministry now for something like 38, 9 years, and I pastored for quite a number of those years, and I know you can go to certain individuals and talk to them about certain things, and they will talk all day long. But then you begin to talk to them about spiritual things, and you immediately run into a closed door. You know, you talk to them about golf or something, Wow, did you see that game yesterday? Wasn't Tiger Woods great? You know, did you see that one shot? And they'll go on just rattling off. And then you say, Brother, what's God doing in your life these days? And their head sort of drops and, you know, a few sort of mumbles, and you realize there's a closed door there. And God is wanting those doors to be opened. Something is not right with the house of God. I could stand here all night and tell you horror stories, and I know there are many ministers here tonight, or at least a number of ministers here, and I'm sure you could add to those stories as well. I remember a young man in my own congregation, well, he wasn't that young. He was late 30s, thereabouts, maybe 40. Used to come to almost every single meeting. In fact, he drove further than anybody else in the congregation a good 60 miles. He and his wife, he was there every Monday night for a prayer meeting. He was always there on a Wednesday night, always there on Sunday. Hardly ever missed a meeting. I've heard him stand up and testify and different things. And then one day he came to my office, and all of a sudden the door was opened. I'd been involved in an ambitious relationship with my daughter for years and years and years. Here is a man in the house, his hands raised at different times, but you see there was a door that suddenly opened. And again, I could tell you all sorts of stories about what goes on behind closed doors. But the doors have to be opened if the uncleanness is going to be carried out. And one of the things the enemy will do is say, whatever you do, don't open the door. You fool people this long. Here was a man again. He fooled the previous pastor. He had certainly fooled me for a couple of years. He knew all the religious jargon, if you like. You know, he carried his Bible under his arm, God bless you, good to see you, and so on and so forth. You know, his hands would go up when certain songs were sung and so on and so forth. But there was a closed door there, and nobody knew what was behind that closed door. And I find in the house of God, there's an awful lot of sin that goes on under the guise of church-anity, Christianity, whatever you want to call it. And God is saying, listen, those doors have to be opened. I am not going to cover sin any longer. Revival comes when we get honest. And honesty is a willingness to say, listen, I don't care if I'm an elder, I don't care if I'm a deacon, I'm going to be transparent, I'm going to be honest, and I'm going to acknowledge. Listen, I'm battling with this, and I'm battling with that. And I fool my wife, and I fool my kids, but I can't fool God. Everything is open and bare, naked before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. And I'm tired of being a hypocrite. And we begin to get honest in the house of God. It's amazing what goes on in the house of God, isn't it? But it's only again as we become willing to open the doors. And the enemy says, listen, don't do it. You know, there's fears, there's all sorts of things, embarrassment, pride, a thousand reasons why we won't open the doors. But you know, in the parable of the sower, the reason that the seed brought forth ultimately 30, 60, and 100 fold was not because it fell into a spiritual heart, as good as that is, not that it fell into a righteous heart, not that it fell into, you know, a pure heart. The Bible says it fell into an honest heart. It's when we become honest that the Word of God can have an impact in our life. And honesty is that transparency and that willingness to say, listen, I don't care what people think anymore. I want to get rid of this thing. It's bound me. It's been something that has just kept me from making any sort of progress in my spiritual life. It's the one thing, the anchor, if you like, that has held me back from moving on with God. And I don't care who knows about it. I'm going to get right with God. And so here is what is happening here. The doors are being closed. As a result, there is all this uncleanness. Verse 5, listen to me. He says, O Levites, consecrate yourself now. Consecrate the house of the Lord, the God of your fathers, and carry the uncleanness out from the holy place. In other words, what is going on in the inside of the house is what has to be dealt with. You'll notice if you read through this chapter, and we won't deal with every verse, but if you have time to read through, Hezekiah doesn't do anything to the outside of the house. In other words, he doesn't repair the roof. He doesn't, you know, repair the shutters or whatever the house had, the temple had. You see, the problem with God's house was not external, it was internal. And the problem with God's house today is not external, it's internal. We know how to present ourselves externally, don't we? We have our, you know, our suits, our dresses, and our Easter bonnets, or whatever the case may be. And we come along, and we look very fashionable, and we've got all the religious jargon, and so on. And outwardly, we look very spiritual, very pious. And yet inside, there's all sorts of uncleanness. Inside, things are not the way they should be. And so it's an internal problem that Hezekiah is dealing with, not an external problem. Verse 6, he begins to tell us now the reason why things are in the condition that they're in. He gives us a little bit of background. Our fathers, he said, have been unfaithful, and have done evil in the sight of the Lord our God. And they have forsaken Him. Let me say that again. Our fathers have been unfaithful, and they have forsaken Him. It all begins with a breakdown in our own personal relationship with God. I was with a gentleman just a couple of weeks ago in Michigan. He was driving me to the airport. He talked about a particular study he read where he said, I have never, this gentleman who is well-known, I guess, in the counseling field, had written numerous books. He said, I have never, ever had to deal with a minister that has fallen, that has maintained his devotional life. Never once. Amazing, isn't it? But it begins with unfaithfulness to God Himself. My wife got to know a lady when we were living in Pensacola. They became very good friends. Used to pray together. Very wonderful woman of God. But she, about 10 or 15 years prior to this, had been unfaithful to her husband. And the husband wanted to get to know me a little bit, and so we went out for a meal together, at least a snack. And we were sitting there, and he wanted to know. He says, listen, has your wife told you very much about our past, our situation? I said, well, I know a little bit. And he said, well, I'm glad. And he began to recount a little bit this episode in his life. And here it was many years ago. They were restored, both in ministry, doing extremely well. But even as he told me about the unfaithfulness of his wife, the tears were brimming there in his eyes. I mean, the pain was still there. I think one of the greatest pains that God has to bear is unfaithfulness in the house of God with the people of God. After all, we are likened to that of a bride, going to be married to the wonderful bridegroom one day. And yet, how often we are unfaithful. We have other lovers, don't we? Lovers that surpass our love for God. That's why James says, you adulterers and adulteresses, no, you're not. The friendship with the world is enmity against God. Spiritual adultery is one of the major sins of the Bible. And God complains about it time after time after time. Here is one of those complaints again through Hezekiah. You've been unfaithful to me. You've found other lovers, other forms of satisfaction. Jeremiah puts it a little differently. He says, you've forsaken me, the fountain of living water. You've fumed out for yourself cisterns that hold no water. In other words, you're looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places. And you're not coming to me that you might have life, Jesus said. And so here's the situation. This is the downward spiral now. This is where it begins. It begins when we have a greater love relationship with something other than God Himself. And you know what that is in your own life. It's when we lose our first love. I have just completed a book on the seven churches of Revelation, not dealing with every facet of those churches, but several years ago, and the pastors that are here will know, one of the most popular books in church growth circles was the purpose-driven church. I believe a church out here in California. And I've read a little bit of that book, and I think there's a lot of good in it. But you know, the purpose-driven church of the seven churches was the church of Ephesus. Everything about that church was driven with, you know, zeal and toil, and according to G. Campbell Morgan, those words there, you know, a congregation that was toiling to the point of pain and sweat and muscle ache. I mean, there's not a pastor here that doesn't want to have a congregation with every single person so involved in ministry activity that they're literally, their muscles, their spiritual muscles are aching. You know, their zeal. It was a squeaky-clean church as far as orthodoxy was concerned. You try those, they're apostles, and on out, and so on. I mean, it was the purpose-driven church of the New Testament. Unfortunately, it was passionless. You see, I believe God is not looking for a purpose-driven church. He's looking for a presence-driven church. He's looking for a passion-driven church. And you can have a purpose-driven church. It can have 10,000 members, but unless it has a first love, something is wrong. You can have 10,000 unfaithful members. They have forsaken Him. They're more enamored with their program and with their buildings and everything else than they are with a deep love relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is where it begins. It begins with this one breakdown, you've forsaken me. The next thing is this, and they turn their faces away from the dwelling place of the Lord. See, the reason people stop coming to church is not because normally, at least, they lose interest in the church. It's indicative of the fact that their personal relationship with God is not what it should be. And once we lose that and we become unfaithful to Him, then the next step is we become unfaithful to the house of God and the people of God. But it doesn't begin there. It doesn't, you know, somebody doesn't just wake up one Sunday morning and say, I don't think I'd like to go to church today. No, it begins long before that. They're no longer reading the Word of God. They're no longer spending time in prayer. There's no longer any family devotion or personal devotion. And therefore, why go to church? So it says, they've forsaken Him, and turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the Lord, and they've turned their backs. They've also shut the doors of the porch, and they've put out the lamps. Now, the lampstand, of course, as you know, is the symbolic of the ministry of the Spirit of God. And the lampstand was placed according to God's instructions to Moses. It said, when you make that lampstand, menorah, it is to be placed in such a way that it will give light to that which is in front of it. The thing that was directly in front of the lampstand was the table of showbread, representing the Word of God. And when the light is out, again, there is no illumination, there's no revelation, there's no insight, and no desire, no hunger for the Word of God. And how many, again, if we are honest tonight, would say, listen, there's no longer any light in my own life. There's no longer any awareness of the Spirit of God's activity in my life. I'm no longer hearing the voice of God. I no longer have a desire for the things of God. The light has gone out. I no longer have vision. I no longer have direction. I no longer have revelation or illumination. Not only was the lamp out, it says, nor have they burned incense. Now, incense, of course, was indicative of two things, prayer primarily, but also praise, and those two go together. You see, this is all part of this downward spiral. We lose out on our relationship with God. We no longer have a desire to go to the house of God and be involved in the things of God. There's no longer any stirring. There's no longer any spiritual activity going on within us. After all, we are supposed to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. We're no longer praying, no longer reading the Word of God. These things have all begun to diminish and drop off. And this is what happens, why a nation or why a church or an individual comes to this place of spiritual decline. And again, I'm not going to ask you, I'm not going to embarrass you as to what your prayer life is like and what your times of praise are like, but if they're not operating on a regular basis, and I don't want to be legalistic, there are times when I have to be up at 4 o'clock in the morning and travel somewhere, and I may not get in my devotional time until I get to a hotel and so on. I don't think God is disappointed with that. I try and make it up. But I like when I'm normally at home, my wife will tell you as soon as breakfast is over, I'm in my office and she answers the phone for the next hour and I'm on my face before God. I can't live without being in the presence of God. And I owe that to a man of God that I worked with for 15 years in a wonderful church in New Zealand that became one of the largest churches there. Started off with about 400 members when I first joined. We had about 1,800 members by the time I left. It wasn't all because of me, obviously, but God wonderfully blessed that church. And He would say to us as a staff, I don't ever want you coming into this office unless I know you spend at least an hour on your face before God. Now again, when you've got 1,800 people in a church, there's always activities, there's always people to visit, people you go to see in hospital and so on, funerals and everything else that happens with a busy church. But Brother Peter, as we called him, the senior pastor, he said, David, and he would take us out periodically. The phone would ring and it would be Peter on the end and the secretary would say, Peter wants to talk to you and he would get on the phone. He said, listen, I'm coming into town. He used to spend most of the time in the little room in the back of his house where he would fast and pray hours a day. But periodically he would come in and he would say, David, let's go out for a milkshake. And everybody on staff, at least the six full-time pastors, knew what a milkshake was. It was we were going to leave the office building or the church building, go down the road somewhere, get into a little coffee shop in some corner and he would begin to grill us. How's your marriage? How are things going with you and Nancy? You know, say, fine. No, how are they really going? And he'd have his way of sort of getting the information he was looking for. But one of the questions invariably that would come up, he says, are you praying and getting an hour of prayer every day? And he would say, David, I don't ever want you coming into this office unless I know you've spent an hour on your face before God. I thank God for that. Fifteen years of discipline in that area and it's hard to break it. And he didn't care what person was waiting there when you got in. I could have spent all day long, literally all day long, in prayer and it wouldn't worry him at least if somebody in the hospital didn't get visited and so on and so forth. But he knew that everything ultimately flows out of relationship. Ministry stems out of relationship. And here we have a situation where the house of God is not functioning the way the house of God should be functioning. Again, we're dealing with a literal building but I'm trying to spiritualize it, at least put it into a practical sense. What about your temple? Is the lamp burning? Is the incense going up on a regular basis morning and evening the incense was to be lit. Then it says, not only was there no burning of incense but the burnt offerings were not being offered. The burnt offering of course is the voluntary offering. And every pastor knows what it's like mainly at the beginning of the year when maybe somebody is leaving that has faithfully taught the Sunday school class for a couple of years or maybe somebody's retiring after 10 or 15 years of teaching the 6 and 7 year olds. And the pastor pleads, is there somebody here that we desperately need somebody to take the 5 and 6 year olds this year. And you know what it's like. It's like pulling teeth. There's no burnt offering in the house of God. Again, it's indicative that things are not right. The Bible says, thy people will volunteer freely in the day of thy power. And when God is really moving and when the power of God is working in the life then there should be a willingness to be involved. But again, when there's no burnt offerings there's something going on. I don't want to do that. It means if I'm going to be effective teaching those kids I'm going to have to set time aside on Friday night or Saturday night and really get into the Word of God and prepare that message and treat this thing seriously. This is not a babysitting job. There may be another Finney there. There may be another Wesley there or Billy Graham or whatever. And if I'm going to give myself to those kids I've got to, you know, begin to pray for them on a daily basis, uphold them before the throne of God and so on. And I don't want that. I don't want that sort of bondage, if you like, placed on me. I want to be free to be able to go to the ball game and do whatever I want to do on Saturday night. And so, you know, we sort of drop our head hoping that somebody else will volunteer. You see, again, all of these things. He says, this is what has happened. Our fathers have forsaken Him. They turned their back on the house of God. The lamps have gone out. They're not burning incense anymore. The burnt offerings are not being offered. Therefore, verse 8, the wrath of the Lord was against Judah. We don't hear much about the wrath of God anymore. We have a God now that is this father figure, this sort of, you know, spiritual teddy bear almost that's nice and cuddly and, you know, He's always there, present, helping, helping time of need. And obviously, you know, He is. But He also is a God that is a jealous God and extremely jealous for His glory and for His body. And when He sees, again, the one that He's going to marry, flirting with every sort of Tom, Dick and Harry so to speak, spiritually speaking, He's angry. Just like any man is when somebody's flirting with his wife and he's madly in love with that girl and he thinks, how dare that man do what he's doing. And God is angry because of the condition of His house. My house shall be called a house of prayer. He's got a standard when He wants the house of God to operate as. And when it is below that standard again, God is angry because they have deliberately forsaken Him. And so it says that the wrath of God was against them. He made them an object of terror, of hissing, as you see with your own eyes. It's tragic, isn't it, when the thing that is supposed to be the means of being a light and salt and a form of testimony and a witness is now an object of terror and horror. And people turn their backs and say, Boy, I don't want to get involved in that congregation. I don't want to get involved with those people and so on and so forth. Where the blessing of God, the anointing of the Spirit of God is lifted where Ichabod is written over the doorposts because the house of God is not in the condition that it should be. Verse 9, Behold, our fathers have fallen by the sword. In other words, death has come in to the house of God, the people of God. Our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity because of this. You know, we wonder why our kids don't want to go to the house of God, why they don't want to be involved in the youth, why they don't want to do some of the things that, you know, we want them to do. Why people are dying. All this again, he says, is a result of these things that we've just looked at. They've been unfaithful, turned their backs and so on. God is angry. And as a result, he said, people have gone into bondage, people have gone into captivity. People are dying. Our fathers have fallen by the sword. In other words, you know, we've been overrun. The enemy has come in. We're now under the servitude and the bondage of other influences. God never intended that. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. Instead of liberty, there's bondage. And people are under the bondage. We say, well, that's the Old Testament. Well, the New Testament says the same thing. For this cause, many among you are weak and sick and a number of you have already died. We don't hear messages about that anymore, do we? He doesn't say it's a rare exception. He says, for this cause, many. And a number of you, not just an isolated case, not one every five years, but he said in this congregation, Paul says, people are dying left, right, and center. Why? Because they're not doing what the Word of God tells them to do. And so there is literal death as well as spiritual death that can happen. I'm talking primarily about physical, not physical, but spiritual death, but physical can also be there as well. And then we have this decision that Hezekiah makes in verse 10. Now it is in my heart, he says, to make a covenant with the Lord, the God of Israel, that His burning anger may turn away from us. And so he has assembled the Levites. He's consecrated them according to verse 5. He's addressing them. He's telling them a little bit of the background, why we're in the condition that we're in, why God's favor is no longer on the house of God. Instead of God's favor, it's God's anger. It's God working against His people instead of God working with them. Remember, in the New Testament, it talks about God working with them. Nothing greater than when God decides to work with us. And we know that God is working with us. But when God is working against us, that's a pretty tough way to operate, isn't it? When you know that God's hand is restrained towards you. After all, God does resist the proud. And He gives grace to the humble. There's a gentleman by the name of Francis Frangipane. Some of you may know that name. Francis does a lot of speaking on spiritual warfare. And a number of years ago, he was sharing, I was in a meeting, and he said, you know, wherever I go, and he will only go into a town if he can get churches to cooperate, because he believes that where brethren dwell together, God commands a blessing. And so he has as one of his prerequisites, if you like, for coming that God will bring churches together. But because he ministers on spiritual warfare so much, of course, all the intercessors immediately want to discern from him what's going on. You know, he says, wherever I go, there's always somebody saying, you know, this is one of the toughest areas in the country. I've had people that travel like myself, and it's amazing, wherever you go, this is always the toughest area. You know, there's more witchcraft in this valley, and then you go somewhere else, and they'll tell you there's more New Age here, or there's more of this there, or there's, you know, it seems to be widespread, doesn't it? But anyway, they'll come to him and say, listen, you know, we feel we're up against some sort of major principality. There's some sort of opposition here. You know, the churches are struggling in our community. We're not having much of a breakthrough. You know, has God given you any insight? And many times he, of course, he hasn't been there long enough to sort of seek the mind of the Lord, but other times he's been there maybe four or five or six days, and he's picked up different things. And he'll say, well, actually, yes, I've got some insight. He said, I believe you are up against a major sort of power. And, of course, the intercessor's eyes, you know, begin to rivet and, you know, bulge out of their heads almost. And he said, well, have you got any idea what this principality is? Have you got some sort of a name? He says, I haven't even got a name. Of course, now they're really, you know, all eyes on him. And he said, well, what is it? What's the name? What's the name of the principality? You know, and he says, well, he said, the principality's name is Yahweh. And, you know, eyes sort of furrow a little bit. What did you say? He says, the principality's name is Yahweh. He said, but Yahweh, that's God's name, isn't it? He said, yeah, God's name. He said, well, I don't understand it. He said, well, you see, God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. And ever since I've been in your community, you've been talking about how great your denomination is or how much better your church is than this one, or how much bigger, and so on and so forth. He said, God does resist the proud, and he means it. He says, listen, if it's a principality, you have every chance in the world, again, to dethrone, if you like, that principality. But when God resists you, he says, you will never, ever, ever make any progress until you humble yourself in the sight of God. And many times we get in that place, don't we, where we just have that little superior feeling, I'm a little better than this church, or a little better than that group, or we're, you know, ten times bigger, or, you know, we've been here the longest, and we, this is our territory, and, you know, and so on and so forth. Those are the very things that God says, listen, I'm sorry, but I can no longer, I'm going to have to hold you at arm's length. And so God gets angry. But here he is now making a covenant, and he says, God, we want to have your smile of approval, not your burning anger, basically. Verse 11, My sons, do not be negligent now, for the Lord has chosen you to stand before him, to minister to him, and to be his ministers and burn incense. He now presents the ideal that they have fallen from. Listen, don't you realize what we have lost, the privilege, the opportunity, number one, of being able to stand before him? There is nothing greater than that, is there? There's no calling on earth that can surpass coming into the presence of God, standing before a holy God. That's what Elijah says when he went to Ahab. The Lord God before whom I stand, access into the presence of God. I think that's one of the greatest privileges that we can have. And he says, listen, this is what we've given up, this is what we've lost. We no longer have access. And the second thing he says, not only can we stand before him, but we can minister to him. I don't understand how God and all his completeness can be ministered to, or needs to be ministered to in that sense, but we can. We can touch the heart of God. Just as Noah, God smelt that aroma, it says, and he says, I'll never again destroy the earth. There's something about that aroma, that praise that we can offer up to God that satisfies God in a way that nothing else can. And we need to avail ourselves of that privilege of coming into his presence, administering to him. And then, of course, once we have done that, we can be his ministers. You can't be his ministers without being with him. It says in the New Testament, Jesus appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach. And as a friend of mine says, we have no right to go out to preach unless we spend time with him. He appointed twelve that they might be with him. And here, Hezekiah has the right order. We don't go out to represent him unless we have spent time in his presence ministering to him. Then we can go out and we can represent him. And so he now says, listen, this is why things have gone wrong, but this is the ideal that we've left behind. Verse 15, they assembled, it says, along with their brothers. They consecrated themselves. They went in to cleanse the house of the Lord according to the commandment of the king by the word of the Lord. The cleansing now is beginning and you'll notice that there is only one standard for this cleansing. It is cleansing according to the word of God, not cleansing according to man's opinion of what's right and wrong, what's OK. You know, we've got all sorts of standards these days. Well, you know, God's not quite as fussy about that as He used to be and so on. He's got to the point, obviously, where now we're allowing homosexuals into not only the house of God, and of course they're welcome as long as they get saved, but we're tolerating their lifestyle and saying that they can be, you know, they can be Christians as well as practice what they do. And not only that, but we have clergy now, so-called, that are gay clergy, but that's not according to God's word. The standard that God says the house of God has to be measured by, the cleansing has to be according to God's word, not according to what is politically correct, not according to what man may think is OK, but according to what the word of God says is right or wrong. Verse 16, it says, They went into the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it, and every unclean thing they found in the temple they brought out. Notice, they went right into the inner part. This was not superficial. It was not just a, you know, sort of a dusting type thing. I don't know how many Levites there are here. I'm sure there's possibly dozens of them going into a building, and we'll see a little later on how many days it took. This was not just a little sort of a spring cleaning or dusting over. This was an absolute thorough cleansing that took place. They went right into the very inner part. The psalmist says there in Psalm 51, Thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and it's the inward parts. It's those hidden areas. Again, the psalmist says the hidden sins are the secret sins in the light of your presence. Those are the things that have to be dealt with, and those are the things that are dealt with in true revival. God deals, again, with those areas. So it says every unclean thing that they found. Not just a few, but everything. We've got to be totally transparent. We can't just deal with some things that maybe are obvious and then keep a few little sins to ourselves. No, everything has to be brought out of the house of God. It says they brought them out. They carried them out to the Kidron Valley. Again, that was basically the garbage dump where the fires were, and everything was burned, destroyed. Verse 17, The consecration began on the first day of the first month, and on the eighth day of the month they entered the porch of the Lord. They consecrated the house in eight days and finished on the sixteenth day of the first month. Sixteen days of cleansing. Over two weeks with maybe, goodness knows how many Levites, fifty, a hundred. I mean, you are talking about an absolute thorough cleansing in the house of God. That is revival. When we get that passionate, that desirous, that committed, that we are not going to put this off another day, we're not going to put it off another month, but on the very first day that we can do something about it, we're going to go in, we're going to open those doors, we're going to repair the doors, we're going to open at certain times, close at certain times. But we are going to deal with every single trace of sin in the house of God, and in our own lives. Verse 18, They finally go to King Hezekiah. We've cleansed the whole house of the Lord. The altar of burnt offering, the utensils, the table of showbread, all of the utensils. Moreover, all the utensils which King Ahaz had discarded during his reign, in his unfaithfulness, we've prepared, consecrated. Behold, they are before the altar of the Lord. Everything now has been brought back to the place that God intended it to be. Everything is functioning again, or at least about to function. Verse 25, Then he stationed the Levites in the house of the Lord with symbols, harps, lyres, according to the command of David. And of Gad, the king's seer, of Nathan the prophet, for the command was from the Lord through his prophets. The Levites stood with the musical instruments of David and the priests with the trumpets. And it goes on to say, the trumpets began, the burnt offerings began. Verse 28, The whole assembly worshipped. The singers also sang. The trumpets sounded. All this continued until the burnt offering was finished. At the completion of the burnt offering, the king and all who were present bowed down and they worshipped. Verse 30, King Hezekiah and the officials ordered the Levites to sing praises to the Lord with the words of David. And Asaph the seer, they sang praises with joy and they bowed down and they worshipped. Now there is always an order in God's word that is never in any other order than this. Righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. There can never be joy, celebration without, first of all, consecration. There has to be righteousness. The work of righteousness is peace. In other words, we can't sort of just gloss over sin, get somebody up there with a guitar and sort of whoop it up and have a sort of a celebration. It is meaningless to God. It may sound good. It may be technically, you know, good as far as the musicality is concerned and so on, but it stinks in the nostrils of God when there is not a foundation of righteousness. You see, there's been cleansing. There's been consecration. Everything has been put back according to God's standard. Now there can be genuine praise. Jesus said, You honor me with your lips. Your heart is not right. In other words, you can rattle off these songs by rote. You can memorize them and so on, but listen, it doesn't come from a pure heart. A genuine praise has to come from this place of cleansing. He's put a new song in my mouth. Why? Because he lifted me also out of a horrible pit and out of the miry clay. He set my feet on a solid rock. Now I can sing with a genuine thank you Lord for saving my soul. But a person that has got sin in the life really can't express to God true worship Isn't that right? We have the story in the Old Testament of Achan. You recall Achan was the one that decided that when they went into Ai, he saw some things there that he coveted and some gold and garments and so on and snuck them off and buried them in his tent and of course everything ground to a halt and Joshua falls on his face before the Lord and he says, Listen, you know, I don't understand it. You know, we were able to take Jericho the other day, this vast city with its thousands and thousands of people and we saw that whole city demolished and now we go to this little tiny village and we get, you know, people are killed and were defeated. What's going on? God says, Get off your feet. Israel has sinned. Therefore it cannot stand before the enemy. And of course he begins to try and find out what's going on and he assembles them tribe by tribe and house by house and he basically says, Praise the Lord, brother. And it seems that when he got to Achan, Achan's head went down and instead of his hands going up and said, Bless God. You know, you can't really praise God when there's sin in your life. And somehow he says, Hey, you're the guy. You know, you're not praising God like the rest of them. At least that's my interpretation of that. If you look at it, that seems to be what happened. And so there has to be cleansing before there can be genuine celebration. But when the celebration began, boy, did it begin. I mean, the trumpets, the cymbals, everything, people are bowing down. There's this incredible song of the Lord that's ascending to God. Why? Because it's coming now from clean hands and a pure heart. And one of the things that has happened in all the great revivals is there's been a rebirth of different songs and so on that have come out, revival songs that have come out of what God has done in the lives of His people as a result of cleansing taking place. There's a new song, verse 35, thus the service, the last part of the verse, thus the service of the house of the Lord was established again. God is wanting to establish again His house the way He intended His house to function. And we need to be open to that. Lord, what is it that You are wanting to establish again? What are we missing? What dimensions are we missing, Lord? Why were we not operating the way You intended us to operate and so on? Then Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced over what God had prepared for the people because the thing came about suddenly. Doesn't have to take, you know, a long time necessarily. It can happen suddenly just like the Day of Pentecost, suddenly. When we make up our mind that we're going to pursue God and we're going to remove every obstacle, we're going to be honest and transparent and say, Lord, it's not my brother or sister, it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. Lord, I've had this secret sin, I've had this bitterness, this resentment towards my sister, my brother, whatever it is, that business deal that didn't go right and I've held a grudge, whatever it is. Lord, I'm prepared to put that thing right, I'm prepared to go to that person and so on. I'm not going to leave any stone unturned until I can honestly look in Your face and know, Lord, there's nothing between my soul and the Savior. Then revival is going to come. We know what happened, of course, as a result of this, the news began to spread and the king ordered letters to be sent around and, of course, once revival comes, there's an attraction that goes out, people start to come in from various places. Why? Because the house of God is functioning again the way the house of God is supposed to function. My father used to say, you never have to advertise a fire. One of these buildings gets on fire and everybody's going to come out of their doors and drive down to the middle of Hemet or whatever and look around and, you know, we're fascinated, aren't we, by fires and when there is a spiritual fire. Everybody went out to see John the Baptist. Why? Because he was a bright and burning light, shining light. And when a man of God is on fire, when the people of God are on fire, when the church is on fire, again, people are going to come in. Why? Because there's something attractive about that. And so word goes out. Verse 9, part of the appeal, or verse 8, do not stiffen your neck like our fathers but yield to the Lord, enter His sanctuary which He has consecrated forever. Serve the Lord your God that His burning anger may turn away from us. In other words, we can still, even in the midst of revival, have pride, we can still harden our heart, be stubborn, rebellious, not allow the spirit of God to break us, but He's appealing, listen, humble yourself. Don't stiffen your neck any longer and God's anger will turn away from you. If you return to the Lord, verse 9, your brothers and your sons will find compassion before those who led them captive. In other words, this is the way out of bondage. This is the way out of captivity. When we get right with God, we find favor and again, we can walk out of our captivity. And I'm talking about spiritual captivity. There's a lot of captivity in the house of God. Jesus came not only to preach the gospel, to set captives free. The people that are captivated are in bondage to lust and all sorts of other things that should never be in the house of God. But nevertheless, we find them, that they're there. But the way out of that, again, is to humble ourselves and I believe God can open that door and He can set you free. I don't care how great a sin that is, how great a bondage you've been into that thing. Whether it's alcohol, tobacco, whatever it is, God can set that thing free and bring you out into liberty. Just as though that thing never had a hold on your life. For the Lord your God is compassionate, gracious, compassionate. Will not turn His face away from you if you return to Him. See, God will not turn you away. He'll come up to me, I will in no wise cast out. This is the Old Testament equivalent, if you like. If you are genuine about what you want to do, you'll find that God is a gracious God, He's a compassionate God, He's not going to turn His face away from you. And so the couriers passed from city to city throughout the country, it says. Nevertheless, verse 11, some of the people of Zebulun, they humbled, well, verse 10, it says that some of them laughed, some of them scorned, mocked, and the others humbled themselves. There's always different responses. We can humble ourselves or we can mock and just sit there and say, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to make a fool of myself. You know, after all, I've got a position in church, I'm not going to come forward and acknowledge that there's anything wrong with me. I've fooled people long enough, I can fool them another five years and you can go out of this house, again, still in bondage, still in captivity, still with the light out, no revelation, no insight, just all closed up and shut up in yourself, no real joy, but your pride will not allow you to break or you can again come to that place and say, God, I'm so desperate for you. It's been so long since I've heard your voice, it's been so long since this word was meaningful to me. There's no insight, it's just the leather that kills, the spirit needs to bring life to it. I will never forget, I went through Bible college and did my homiletic course, like everybody else, how to preach, but I think the thing that helped me the most was a little story I heard about the Hebridee revival where Duncan Campbell had a dream one night in the midst of that revival, if you know anything about that revival, 75% of the people that got saved got saved outside of the house of God. God saturated the community. There were lights on all night in different places, people getting out of bed, getting right with God, they couldn't sleep because the spirit of God brought conviction to the community. People got saved as they were walking down the street, they fell into the head or under conviction of sin. They said five years after that revival you can count on one hand the number of backsliders, the dance halls closed down, the bars closed down, amazing revival back in the late 40s, early 50s. But in the middle of that revival, Duncan Campbell had a dream one night, a revision, I can't remember which, and in it he saw himself making his way into one of these little townships on those islands, a little group of islands off the west coast of Scotland. And as he approached this little town, here was this huge crowd of people and as he got closer he heard the word of God being preached. And as he got closer still he didn't recognize the preacher and as he got closer again he saw sort of a hideous look on this man's face and finally the crowd dispersed and he went up and as he got closer he realized it was the devil. And he said to the man, he says, you're the devil, aren't you? He said, yes I am. He says, what on earth are you doing preaching the word of God? And God said, at least he says that God gave him this dream, a vision. He said, the devil said to him, he said, Duncan Campbell don't you know the greatest weapon I have is the preaching of the word of God without the anointing of the spirit. The greatest weapon I have. You see, the letter kills. And if you take a knife that is not sharp and you run it over your fingers repeatedly what happens? You build up a callus. And after a while that thing is so callused it's almost impossible to cut through it so hard. And we have people sitting under the word of God on a regular basis and they're so callused they're practicing sin but there's no conviction of sin because there's no anointing on the word of God. The letter kills but the spirit gives life. And here the spirit of God is beginning to work. You go on in chapter 30 certain things began to happen. They prayed and people were healed. It says there was incredible joy verse 26 great joy in Jerusalem because there was nothing like this in Jerusalem since the days of Solomon the son of David the king of Israel. Then the Levitical priests arose and blessed the people and their voices were heard and their prayer came to his holy dwelling place in heaven. You see as a result of the consecration there is genuine celebration celebration that is acceptable because the psalmist says let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be what? Acceptable in thy sight. I told I am not musical I wish I was. I've written numerous songs but when I try and sing them to my wife she says they come out monotone so there they go I've got a palm pilot with about 60 sitting on them. But I tell those that do lead worship you've got to study Malachi chapter 1 every worship leader needs to study that chapter because God complains He says oh that somebody was sensitive enough to go to the back of the the temple in this case and shut the gates. Why shut the gates He says because you are uselessly kindling fire on mine altar. In other words you're going through all the mechanics the priests are there they've got their knives they're slitting the throats of these animals you know various animals and they're being burnt according to the various laws that were determined concerning each one some were burnt offerings some were sin offerings peace offerings and so on and God is saying listen none of that is effective. Why don't you just go to the back door shut everything down because you're wasting my time and all that fire and all that smoke and everything that is going up is doing absolutely no good whatsoever. And of course the people are startled and say well you know if you study the book of Malachi the question is but how? You know basically prove it God. You know time after time God will say something and say well prove it. You know how? How have we done that? We disagree with it. Prove you know bring forth some evidence. And of course He says you're bringing the blind and the lame and the sick and the diseased and He says I can't accept it. He says you wouldn't do that to the governor you wouldn't do that to the mayor you wouldn't do that to some dignitary you wouldn't present some sort of offering or some sort of present knowing that it had a blemish in it. You'd be embarrassed for the man to open the box and find here is you know some sort of a gift that you've given him with a great big dent in it or something and he said but that's the way you're offering things to me things that are not acceptable because the blind the diseased the lame and I wonder how many times on a Sunday morning God doesn't really think listen if only somebody would shut the gates this morning. Or the music sounds good to the natural ear but it's not acceptable to me the sin there's a man that was sleeping with somebody else's wife last night there's somebody else that was doing something else and so on and so forth this congregation is full of the sick and the lame and the diseased being offered up it's half-hearted. You see when the New Testament talks about the sacrifice of praise we need to understand it in the terms of the Old Testament. The sacrifice had to be the very best the equivalent of what we would call today a blue ribbon winner at the local state fair. You know the finest of the fine where it's been examined and everything about it is absolutely perfect. You couldn't bring some sort of half-hearted sort of offering to God. And yet we've sort of taken that sacrifice of praise to mean well Lord you know I've been up all night and a little tired this morning but Lord I hope you appreciate this is a real sacrifice for me. Well there may be a little measure of that very small measure but really the sacrifice is given in the very best. And there is a greater priest than any earthly priest that is inspecting your sacrifice. And if it's half-hearted if it's diseased and lame and blind and so on God says listen you might as well close the door. And so here is acceptable sacrifices. It's offered again from clean hands and a pure heart. But now we find that prayer is being answered. You see it says the prayer arose but the prayer also came into his holy dwelling place. If I regard iniquity in my heart God will not hear me. And so there may have been prayers going up prior to this but God wasn't listening God wasn't answering. The heavens were like brass prayers were just sort of bouncing off the ceiling so to speak but now that things are right all of a sudden God is listening. The same thing is true you wonder why your prayer is not being answered you need to first of all check your own life it's not God it's at fault you're the one that's at fault. When all of this was finished it says all Israel who were present went to their cities and they broke down the pillars in pieces we're chapter 31 now cut down the Asherim pulled down the high places and the altars throughout all Judah and Benjamin as well as in Ephraim and Manasseh until they destroyed them all. Notice every form of idolatry now is dealt with. You cannot have a revival and maintain your idolatry. These are the people of God notice this is going on Ephraim and Judah place of praise supposedly Benjamin and other places and how much idolatry is in the house of God anything that you place before God is an idol. Paul says covetousness which is idolatry just covetousness and so true revival is going to deal with every form of idolatry which means that God is going to be back in his rightful place thou shalt have excuse me no other gods before you thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all your soul with all your heart with all your strength with all your mind that's revivalism where he becomes first and foremost he regains a place of preeminence in all things he might be preeminent not just present not prominent but preeminent and so this again is the result not only that they begin tithing again verse 5 again chapter 31 soon as the order spread the sons of Israel provided in abundance the first fruits you see once we once we lose our affection for God and once we turn our back on the house of God guess what we're not interested in funding anything to do with God so to speak all of a sudden we're interested in our own pleasures and own desires and you know you can tell how spiritual the church is I believe by the amount of giving my dad used to say you know I'm trying to think how he'd put it now when the people are blessed they'll give or was it maybe I've got it wrong but anyway it's a sign that when we're right with God we begin to give He becomes our first love you know when you're so madly in love with your wife and she wants that new dress you fork it over don't you I mean you know you want to please her I mean money is not an object because there is a love there that surpasses you know and you think honey I'll buy you a dozen if you want them type thing you know if you've got the means and once we're in love with God again the money should start flowing and it certainly does here it says they provided in abundance so there's answers to prayer there's the money that is coming in and you can go through and see other things that took place but this is revival one of the great revivals of the Old Testament all because one man got serious about putting the house of God in its rightful place and made it a priority on the first day of the first month of his reign today is the day of salvation you know don't put it off don't say well maybe tomorrow night and so on after all I've got plans tonight and so on let's be honest and let's say Lord I know that this life is not in the condition that it should be spiritual Lord I've drifted I've been drifting now for months and maybe years I no longer have a fascination with your word I no longer really enjoy your word it's been months since I've spent time in the closet or once in a while I shoot up some sort of quickie little prayer but Lord as far as really seeking your face it's been a long time and Lord quite frankly you know there are some meetings I just I'm not really interested in going to I just assumed me out playing golf on Sunday morning if I could if it wasn't for the fact that my wife you know would get after me I mean you know something has shut down in us we're just going through the rituals a form of godliness but there's no power there's no life there's no reality and if we're honest and say God that's me I need reviving I need the breath of God to be breathed into me I'm dying on the inside oh I've got enough religious knowledge to keep a you know the impression that I'm okay but Lord you know and I know that inside things are not the way they should be things have shut down long ago and if that's you tonight don't put it off the first day of the first month of the first year you open the doors nothing will happen until you open the doors and the enemy will whisper listen it's getting late or the enemy will whisper listen don't do that I mean you've got to determine listen I don't care who knows about it I'm going to open that door there's uncleanness there that has got to come out I can't stand it any longer and I don't care who knows I'm going to do it in the sight of God let's just close and pray Father we ask that you would have your way tonight Lord we're not interested in what man sees we're interested again in what you see and Lord you see where no man sees you see down into the recesses of our life the secret sins the hidden things and Lord I pray right now that you would give the grace to deal with each and everything that is wrong in our life Father we know there's tremendous joy there's tremendous freedom when we walk in the light as you're in the light it's then that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses it's then that we can know freedom and true joy and true liberty it's then that Lord we can allow the praises to come that are genuine acceptable and so Lord change us tonight change the house of God Lord change this house of God Lord let it be restored again back to it's rightful condition Lord we're you are pleased to dwell in this house where Lord you are Lord and everything is done according to your word and so Father touch lives even now Lord we are serious even though it may be a few of us tonight Lord we think of what could happen if just this amount of people really got serious began to apologize began to make restitution began to write letters pick up the phone go to others confess to our wives our families our children we haven't been living the sort of life that we've portrayed ourselves to be I don't want you to stand quietly I'm going to ask you if you'd like to come to come to this altar you're not coming to me you're coming to the Lord and make it an altar make it a place where you are willing to give God everything and say Lord here I am you know my heart