Allen Jackson - Satanic Responses (02/08/2026)
Continuing the "Shaping Culture" series from 2 Chronicles and Hezekiah's reforms, the preacher stresses believers' assignment to shape culture through obedience, not be shaped by it—confronting Satan's persistent disruptions. He highlights renewal bringing generosity, behavioral change, and dismantling idolatry's infrastructure, urging return to hospitality and family tables as starting points for transformation amid opposition, pride's dangers, and the need for unwavering courage.
Shaping Culture: Our Biblical Assignment
We're working through a study under the title of Shaping Culture, and this session is very much a continuation of what we did in the previous two sessions. So if you've missed those, it would be worthwhile to go back and listen. It's all been taken from our reading from last week when we were working our way through 2 Chronicles, the end of 2 Chronicles.
In this particular session, I want to talk not only about Shaping Culture, but Satan's responses to that. You know, in the opening chapters of the Bible, Satan challenges God's purposes. He tries to disrupt them. He's still doing that. That pattern hasn't changed. He hasn't been discouraged in his agenda. He's just as persistent. He's still using the same tools. He's still questioning... He'll question in our hearts if God can be trusted, if His Word can be trusted.
But I believe we have an assignment to shape the culture in which we live, not to be shaped by it. That is not universally embraced. I was at a pastor's conference. It was some years ago. It was a gathering of pastors from larger churches, and they put us into some groups.
And I was with a group of about a dozen people. And I don't remember the question we were asked. But I said, well, the church is the conscience of the culture. And 10 of the 11 said no. And we spent a couple hours unpacking that.
And then the real essence of it is they said, we don't want to do that. And I get that. But we're not, you know, we're called to be ambassadors, not if we want to be.
The assignment we're given biblically is to help people be reconciled to God. Which means we have to take the truth of God and engage culture with it. And the failure to do that is a failure to receive fully what Jesus has given to us.
I don't understand that to be optional. I'm a bit perplexed. I was with a group of pastors this week. And to be candid, I felt like several of them were more interested in being friends with the world than holding out the truth to it.
And we're going to have to change our pattern. I'm embarrassed, to be honest, that there's often more truth told these days from people who have secular offices than people who hold positions of authority in the church.
Religious studies departments and universities, our local ones included, typically do everything but encourage people to believe the Bible to be the authoritative Word of God. That's a travesty. Technically, that's apostasy. And it does, if you don't know, biblically, it brings the judgment of God.
So this notion of shaping culture, I don't understand it to be really an optional thing. But I think sometimes we struggle with understanding what that means.
Hezekiah's Bold Reforms as a Model
So I want to use this narrative from 2 Chronicles. We were looking at King Hezekiah. I can't do a complete recapitulation, but I'll give you the short version. He became king when he was 25.
And Israel had fallen into a period of stepping far, far away from God. When he became king, the temple was closed. It was shuttered. It was in such disrepair, the doors didn't work. It was filled with filth.
And in the first month of his ascension to the throne, Hezekiah said, he sent orders to repair the doors of the temple, to open the temple. And he got the priest together and he said, you clean it out. Took 16 days. It was so filthy. It took 16 days to get the idols and the filth out of the temple.
Then he gathered the priest together and he said, now you consecrate yourselves. Which means to set yourself apart from the purposes of God. You're reading that and you're thinking, well, don't the priest know they're supposed to consecrate themselves? And the answer is no, apparently not.
They had made friends with all sorts of other things. And he said, you consecrate yourselves. And then he said to the larger group of the community, he said, now you've got to consecrate yourselves.
And then he sent messengers throughout the whole nation, both to Judah and to Israel, two nations. The northern kingdom had already been conquered by the Assyrians, humiliated publicly, suffered tremendously.
But he sent messengers through the whole nation and said, we're going to celebrate the Passover. Come to Jerusalem. And it said they hadn't celebrated that way in decades and decades and decades.
And so Hezekiah was shaping culture. And he's shaping culture in the midst of the covenant people of God. You see, we're going to have to gain a new kind of courage.
I think we're a bit embarrassed to say to people that we think are Christians, you're not acting like Christians. Well, who made you so judgy? It's not about being judgy. It's about submitting ourselves to the truth of God's word.
Some things aren't open for our interpretation. The sovereignty of God puts some boundaries in place for us. We don't get to decide what's moral and immoral. God gave us those boundaries and we either comply or we're disobedient.
God defined marriage. The Bible says God created us male and female. God said we're to lead generous lives. There's a whole unfolding of things that aren't up to us.
But the assignment we have is to take that truth into the world because it will make our lives better, our homes better, our families better. It will give the best possible future for our children. And Hezekiah is modeling that.
Renewal Brings Generosity and Behavioral Change
In 2 Chronicles 31. I'm back to your notes. Here we go. Listen fast. Somebody came by the office. They just taught me. They said, do you have an outline for tonight? And I said, yeah. And they said, you're not going to finish it, are you? Watch this. Watch.
When all this had ended, the Israelites who were there, they'd come to Jerusalem to worship. And most of the people mocked. Most of the people didn't make the trip to Jerusalem. That's a part of the narrative. It's not my opinion.
If you're looking to be in the majority, that won't be the group who follows the Lord. Jesus said, narrow is the gate and few that enter in. And wide is the gate that leads to destruction and many enter in.
You're going to have to have the courage to be in a minority position. When all of this had ended, the Israelites who were there went out to the towns of Judah. They smashed the sacred stones and they cut down the Asherah Poles and they destroyed the high places and the altars throughout Judah and Benjamin and Ephraim and Manasseh.
After they destroyed all of them, the Israelites returned to their own towns and to their own property. For clarity, I'm not encouraging violence. But I am highlighting that their worship included an entirely new set of behaviors.
These were places where their idolatry had been practiced, where their investment of their time and their energy and their resources. And they weren't just places of worship. It wasn't just like a gathering for a small group or a church service.
Those Canaanite fertility gods had accompanied into their practices of worship all sorts of sexual immorality. So they were places of pleasure, places of recreation. They were places where they imagined it would bring prosperity to you.
If we're looking for modern examples, we would think of... I think of all the ways that gambling and its prevalence amongst us. It's hard... you can't watch a ball game any longer without gambling being a part of the programming.
And our fantasy sports are not so fantasy anymore. They occupy enormous chunks of our time. And we imagine we've become aficionados and there's typically wagering and all sorts of competition involved in that.
You see, worship becomes whatever takes a place of priority of your time and your energy and your resources before God. And they left there this time of worship and the encouragement from Hezekiah and the people that have joined him.
And they leave and they say, we're going to dismantle this infrastructure. We're going to take apart these things where we have spent our lives foolishly. In an ungodly way, we're going to chart a new course.
And I think renewal and awakening brings that. It brings a change of behaviors, not just an engagement in a church service, but a new way to live, a new way to behave. It's a very important principle.
Returning to Hospitality and the Family Table
And I suggested in the previous session that one of the things that we can do. is give back in our lives a place that is biblical. The Bible tells us to practice hospitality. And we've almost lost that notion.
Our lives are so busy and our family's time is so committed to the activities that we have raised our hands for. In the light lobby, our whole building is turned into a storyboard. It's not just random stuff.
In the light lobby, there's two big panels. One about Corrie ten Boom. And one about some crazy people from Tennessee. The thing they share in common is hospitality. They open their homes for the purposes of God.
And God brought a fruitfulness far beyond the imagination that they had when they opened their homes. And I suggested to you that we have to return to the kitchen table.
And I ask you to consider making a commitment to having a meal once a week as a family at a kitchen table. No devices, just your family. I understand that's an intrusion. I understand our lives are busy.
I understand for most of us, it will require a change of calendar. You'll have to address priorities in a new way. I don't agree with the notion that whoever the coach of the month is, for whichever of your children is involved in the sport at this season, should have more authority in your home than God.
But I would submit to you, I've said it to you hundreds and hundreds of times in recent months, is that if we're going to transform our culture, it begins at our kitchen table, it extends to our holiday table, and then it will extend into that circle of friends and influence that we have.
And one way to give just a simple expression to this is taking one meal a week together as a family on purpose. I think it's more important than any ball game. I think it's more important than another social event.
I think it's more important than just about anything you could put on the list. There's a purpose to it. I would submit to you, it's a wellness check. It's an opportunity to sit down. How have you been since we sat together last?
What have you celebrated? What have you cried about? It's a way to acknowledge God's blessings and faithfulness. It's a way, if you still have children at home, it's a way for you to give a demonstration of your commitment to God.
It's far more powerful than a lesson. You might even do something crazy like begin the meal with a prayer. You might even collect things as you have the meal together that you want to pray for before you leave.
So that you've invited God into what's ahead of you in the days ahead. It's a wonderful opportunity for some fundamental learning about how to sit at a table. How to be a part of a family.
How to learn to eat things you don't normally eat. Things you can't get through a fast food window. It helps prepare the children in the family for how to go into the world with a different kind of confidence.
There's a whole host of very important skills that come and it strengthens our families. Many of the problems that we're facing as a society come, not from the deterioration, from the collapse of our families.
I had a conversation today and they said that the... Oh, fiddle. In Shelby County, the truancy... There's a 50% truancy rate in the schools. When you have that kind of impact on a community, it's a reflection that our families are struggling.
Open your home. Open your table. Invite God into the midst of a group of people. And watch the fruit that God will bring from that.
You know, we've learned let's pray. We've done let's read. Now we're going to do let's eat. I think there's a sequel. Let's dessert. But let's go ahead and let's start with let's eat. Okay?
Generosity Flows from True Renewal
Now let's go back to 2 Chronicles. We're going to keep pushing this narrative through. Same chapter. It's chapter 31, verse 5. As soon as the order went out, the Israelites generously gave the first fruits of their grain, their new wine, their oil, their honey, and all the fields, all that the fields produced.
They brought a great amount, a tithe of everything. And the men of Israel and Judah who lived in the towns of Judah also brought a tithe of their herds and their flocks and a tithe of the holy things dedicated to the Lord their God and they piled them in heaps.
Long story short, they brought so much that there were enormous heaps of all the produce and the things they brought. The big picture view of that is renewal brings generosity.
It changes how you spend your time and your treasure and your attention. Shaping culture will lead to a distinction in your behaviors. We have lived in the midst of a secular culture, almost indistinguishable from the secularists around us.
A location on Sunday morning is not what makes us distinctive. It's the choices that we make through the breadth of our lives. And Hezekiah is giving us a beautiful picture of this through what he's leading the nation through.
And again, it's a minority response, which means they have friends and family members and associates and all sorts of people that think they've lost their balance.
Why aren't you doing with us what you used to do? Why aren't you behaving in the way you used to behave? God's called us to be distinctive, not weird distinctive, distinctive by our obedience.
Look at chapter 31, verse 20. This is what Hezekiah did throughout Judah, doing what was good and right and faithful before the Lord his God.
Again, the summary statement is that shaping culture by obedience to God. We're not going to shape culture with sermons. We're not shaping culture by judging people.
We're going to lead lives that are obedient and it will bring the blessing of God. And that gives us an opportunity to say why we're different.
You see, if we're trying to gain opportunities and give our children opportunities by being more secular than the secularist, if we think we can outdo them, where the message is God really isn't significant to us.
He's just some subset of who we are. But obedience to God, full obedience to God brings him front and center, how we spend our time, how we spend our money, how we orchestrate our homes, the authority in our homes, how we behave, what we engage in.
And now we become a living testimony. The distinctiveness of our choices draws attention. And we either become a canvas for the blessing of God and an opportunity to tell the story, or we become compromised people.
Opposition Follows Obedience
Now, chapter 32 is a surprise. If you're reading this narrative, we've had three chapters in a row of Hezekiah, a very young man, 25, taking on a whole entrenched set of behaviors in a nation.
I promise you, he was reviled. He was hated. I'm sure there were many loud voices saying that he was committing economic disaster to the country. And in chapter 32, you know, the last verse with the sentence we just read said that he prospered.
And then the very next verse is after all that Hezekiah had so faithfully done, the king of Assyria came and invaded Judah. Are you kidding me?
We just had verse after verse after verse of Hezekiah's remarkable leadership, choosing the Lord, gathering the priest, repent, prepare yourselves, open the temple, get it ready, investments personally, calling the nation to repentance.
And a great deal of fruit coming from that. And the very next sentence says the king of Assyria invaded. And he laid siege to the fortified cities, thinking to conquer them for himself.
And when Hezekiah saw that the king had come and that he intended to make war on Jerusalem. Now, in my preferred scenario, if I were writing this narrative, I would have right after that verse where it said, so he prospered.
And I would have said that everyone lived happily ever after. That's my preference. The blessings of God unchallenged. That you choose obedience. That you stand up the darkness.
That you engage in a change of behaviors that brings freedom to whole segments of a culture. You overcome the adversity and the hatred and all the things. My preference would be at that point. And God caused you to prosper and your enemies evaporated.
Don't you feel that way? I mean, I'm not wrong in this, right? Like I've been doing the right thing. And it says, you know, God blessed Hezekiah up until the most powerful army of the day.
Marched into Judah. And laid siege to their most important or their most powerful cities. See, I don't believe we can ignore evil and lead triumphant lives. It's a very important point.
We think if we don't talk about it, it'll go away. We say we don't believe in demons. We don't really believe in the devil. We don't believe in all that spiritual stuff. It'll leave us alone. No, it won't.
Evil has to be overcome. Evil is not passive. It isn't accidental to me. In the way the narrative is presented. That Judah was invaded. Evil is not passive.
And I think we have thought we could just talk kindly and evil would relent. No, it won't. Jesus said in John 10 that Satan comes to steal, to kill, and destroy. Not to disrupt, distract, and cause you to feel blue.
He's here to destroy you. There's some lessons to be learned from this.
Encouragement in the Face of Threat
Same chapter, verse 6. It says, Hezekiah appointed military officers over the people and assembled them before him in the square at the city gate and encouraged them with these words, Be strong and courageous.
Don't be afraid or discouraged because of the king of Assyria and the vast army with him. There is greater power with us than with him. With him is only the arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles.
And the people gained confidence from what Hezekiah, the king of Judah, said. If you want to know what they were feeling, you can know by what Hezekiah was saying to them. Be strong and courageous.
They felt frightened and discouraged. They're outnumbered and outgunned. The Assyrian army has better technology. They have a string of victories. He said, Don't be afraid or discouraged.
There's a greater power with us. It didn't look like it. It looked like all the power is with the Assyrians. I think we tend to think that way. We tend to think, Well, we're small in number.
We're few in number. I'm not particularly influential. I don't have a great deal of power. I'm not an influencer. I don't have a platform. I don't have a lot of money.
No, what we have is the name of Almighty God. And Hezekiah said to them, They have only the arm of flesh. With us is the Lord our God. And that's the distinction that we'll have to spend more time thinking about.
You see, when there's a challenge in your life or mine, We have a diagnosis that we don't want. Or we have a circumstance in our life that feels threatening. Or we have a child that is a point of concern.
Or somebody that we love is in a difficult place. And we see all the reasons why it feels hopeless or despair should dominate. And we lose sight of that. With us is the Lord our God.
And He's with us for a very specific reason. Hezekiah articulated it. He said He's to help us and to fight our battles. And the outcome is the people, it says, gain confidence in the Lord.
I would submit to you what we want to do in this season is not be discouraged because we have a Christian martyr in 2025. To not be frightened because there is a lot of wickedness and violence and lawlessness is proliferating across our country.
I woke up on the way to work this morning. I heard the mayor of Chicago just raging because they were arresting Venezuelan gang members in his city. I was thinking, gee, thank you might have been okay.
But I prefer to keep my attention focused on the Lord. He's helping us. He's the one where we want to gain our confidence.
Facing Contempt and Divine Intervention
Now in the next verse, verse 15, the king, the Assyrian general has a statement to make. He said, don't let Hezekiah deceive you and mislead you like this. Don't believe him for no God of any nation or kingdom has been able to deliver his people from my hand or the hand of my fathers.
How much less will your God deliver you from my hand? And Sennacherib's officers spoke further against the Lord God and against his servant Hezekiah.
There will always be voices of dissent. There will always be voices telling you, you shouldn't trust God. You shouldn't believe in God. What's gotten into you? What are you thinking?
Why are you holding that position? Why are you making that choice? Why are you willingly becoming vulnerable? And oftentimes those voices are powerful voices.
In the world today there are powerful voices, powerful platforms that mock God and mock people who believe in God, who practice deception as a matter of daily habit.
And when the truth comes out, they hide the truth or deny the truth. I don't know, put it in your notes, CNN, MSNBC, you can make your own list. They're not exactly bastions of great truth.
Hezekiah is identified as God's servant. So in the face of all of this slander and this boasting of evil, Hezekiah begins with opening the temple, cleaning out the filth, gathering the people to worship, giving generously.
And his obedience led to conflict. We've got to get emotionally prepared for that. We're shocked. Folks, it's at the opening of the Bible.
God created, he says, he created Adam and Eve, he put him in the garden. And he said, it's very good. And he came in the afternoon and he walked with them.
And in all of his complete provision for their lives. And what happens? Satan rolls up and said, did God really say? I mean, the nature of this existence we have is presented to us from the opening chapters of the Bible to the conclusion.
And yet I'm still surprised. Well, I didn't expect it to be difficult. I didn't expect there to be opposition. I didn't expect to have to overcome something.
I thought I had to overcome like sermons that were too long. Or parking places that were too far away. And now I've got like something that's really a problem. It's like really threatening.
Where's God? It's like we haven't paid much attention.
Same chapter. Chapter 32, verse 17. The adversaries are going to increase their contempt for the Lord. The king wrote letters... The Assyrian king wrote letters insulting the Lord, the God of Israel.
Saying this against him. Just as the gods of the peoples of the other lands didn't rescue their people from my hand, so the God of Hezekiah will not rescue His people.
They called out in Hebrew to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall to terrify them. To make them afraid in order to capture the city.
They spoke about the God of Jerusalem as they did about the gods of the other peoples of the world. The work of men's hands.
And King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah cried out in prayer to heaven. I'm not going to take the time to walk you through the other places in the scripture where this narrative is supported.
This isn't the only passage. But the shorthand on it is when Hezekiah heard the threats of the Assyrian king, he prayed. And when Isaiah went to see Hezekiah, he said, because you prayed.
Because you prayed. God intervenes. And I'm telling you, one of the tactics that the scripture presents to us. is that Satan will try to intimidate you by giving expressions of contempt for God.
And then that contempt will come. Sometimes it comes in the form of a diagnosis. Nothing can save you for what I'm about to tell you. Oh, something can.
Sometimes it comes in the shape of a moral opinion that says your morality is out of date, that we're more progressive than that now. We're more enlightened.
And you'll have to say, no, I believe what God said. Sometimes it'll be a voice challenging your decision to structure your family and make that family a priority in your lives.
And you'll have to say, no, no, I believe that's valuable. Hezekiah's adversaries sought to take their contempt for God and to pour it out over all the people.
We see that happening all the time. People celebrating Charlie Kirk's death. He got what he deserved. Because none of us want what we deserve. And we certainly don't want what we think our enemies think we deserve. Amen.
God's response is in the next verse. Verse 21. The Lord sent an angel. This takes a minute to get your brain around. And the Lord sent an angel who annihilated all the fighting men and the leaders and officers in the camp of the Assyrian king.
An angel destroyed an entire army. An angel. I thought all angels did was worship. No, there's some that destroy armies.
So he withdrew to his own land in disgrace. The one who had mocked God and said, he's like all the other gods. Your nation is no different. Don't listen to Hezekiah.
He withdrew in disgrace. And when he went into the temple of his God, some of his sons cut him down with the sword.
So the Lord saved Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem from the hand of the king of Assyria and from the hand of all others. And he took care of them on every side.
Again, if I were writing the narrative, I'd have just clipped that little segment out. I'd rather just... You know, I'm good without the Assyrian chapter.
I'd rather not have to live through that. I'd rather not have to hear their threats. I would rather not have to have the anxiety. I would just...
But you know, we didn't write the narrative. The point of the scripture is to help us understand the character of God, the nature of God, the nature of God's adversaries, so that we might have the strength and the courage to complete our assignment.
And throughout the narrative, from the beginning of the book until the end, the challenges to the purposes of God are consistent. And we're called to overcome them.
God responded to Hezekiah. The attack of the Assyrians resulted in blessings. And in reality, the adversary that approached galvanized the progress which Hezekiah had begun.
You visit Jerusalem today. If I could pick you up, wouldn't that be fun? Wish we could. I'd buy you coffee at Aroma. Except we couldn't get any tonight. It's Yom Kippur, and they're closed.
So maybe we'll wait 24 hours before I pick you up and take you. But if we had the time, we'd go to the city of David. Jerusalem had one primary water source, a spring, in the Kidron Valley.
And when they thought that they might be invaded by the Assyrians, Hezekiah organized his engineers and his workers, and they brought the water source inside the city.
And until today, if you visit Jerusalem, you can walk through Hezekiah's tunnel, which empties into the pool of Siloam, which happened to be the place in John's Gospel where Jesus sent the man with the mud that he'd put on his eyes to wash the mud away.
So you could visit Jerusalem today and see the impact that Hezekiah made because of the threat of an enemy. So even under that threat, God used it to bring good things to the city.
And I would tell you that if you're under threat tonight, physical threat, emotional threat, financial threat, if your family is besieged, if we will turn our hearts to the Lord, God will use what the enemy means for destruction to bring about not just an overcoming, it will bring blessings that will continue for decades and decades to come.
God is awakening a church, not an impotent church, not a theoretical church, a church filled with the Spirit of God, giving demonstration to the power of God.
Pride's Danger After Victory
2 Chronicles 32, verse 24, In those days, Hezekiah became ill. Are you kidding me? I mean, the last verse, from then on, he was highly regarded by all the nations.
That's verse 23. Hezekiah is highly regarded by all the nations. And in those days, he became ill and was at the point of death. And he prayed to the Lord who answered him and gave him a miraculous sign.
But Hezekiah's heart was proud, and he didn't respond to the kindness shown him. Therefore, the Lord's wrath was on him and on Judah and Jerusalem.
And Hezekiah repented of the pride of his heart, as did the people of Jerusalem. And the Lord's wrath did not come upon them during the days of Hezekiah.
There's a lot more to that story, more than we have time to unpack. But again, I think the pattern is very helpful in the midst of a tremendous victory and even international acclaim because he overcame the most feared opponent of his generation.
God provided deliverance. The secular nations looked at that and they thought, well, it had to be Hezekiah's military strategy. It had to be something to do with the might of the people of Judah.
It had to be the defenses of the city of Jerusalem, none of which was actually the source. But that would be the analysis of the secular nations around them.
So Hezekiah and Judah are elevated in the sight of all those other people. And then it says he got sick. And he cried out to the Lord, but in his pride...
Do you know what the expression of his pride was? Envoys from Babylon came to Jerusalem. They'd heard about Hezekiah. They had heard about their victory over the Assyrians.
Guess who the rising world power was? Babylon. So Babylon sends envoys to Jerusalem. They want to see this group of people who defeated the most feared adversary of the day.
And Hezekiah, you know what he did? He showed them all the treasures of the temple. Remember all those piles of things I said the people brought? But Hezekiah boasted about the affluence of the nation to the rising power of the region.
And the Babylonians decided, we'll take that. And Isaiah, the one, the prophet that bears his name, was a contemporary of Hezekiah.
God gave him the coaching he needed. Isaiah rolled in and he said, Hezekiah, in your pride and your arrogance. Holy moly.
If you're watching at home, we just had a light bulb explode. And if you did that on purpose, I want to talk. But Isaiah said, Hezekiah, in your pride and your boasting, you gave away the future of the nation.
He's not a wicked king. He's a godly king. He's a culture shaper. He's done so many good things. May I ask you a question?
Is it possible for those of us who have lived with the Lord, who think our credentials are pretty solid, the fruit of our life is pretty good, do you have the imagination that you could make choices that would bring forfeiture to yourself or to your family?
You know, I see the young people's hearts being stirred, and I'm so thankful for that. But I'm very conscious that those who have a bit of experience with the Lord have a very significant role to play.
I read about the students, the young men at a Christian school in Nashville, required to wear coats and ties, and they showed up with red ties honoring Charlie Kirk. And the headmaster called them in and made them take it off.
Instead, when the kids got to the football game that week, they were chanting, the student body was chanting to fire the headmaster. That's the zeal of youth.
But for the outcome to stick, it'll take the courage of the elders. You see, we can't sit safely on our good intentions and go, isn't it wonderful that the young people's hearts are stirred?
Will we have the courage to disrupt our familiar places? Will we be willing to be identified with the move of God? Or will we be more interested in maintaining our social network and our place in the community?
Hezekiah, in his pride, forfeited a great deal. But he repented. You see, we live in that dynamic, that tension. We allow too much arrogance into our lives.
We don't think there's really anything significant for us to repent of because we're born again. We've experienced the new birth. We have no imagination or very little that there could be a significant forfeiture of what God intends for us.
Hezekiah is a part of the covenant people of God. He's the king in Judah and Jerusalem. He's revered in Scripture as a tremendous expression of faithfulness to God.
And yet, in the pride of his heart, there was a significant forfeiture and he was required to repent. Are you willing to imagine that we might need to do that?
Hezekiah's Legacy and the Call to Obedience
And then finally, verse 32, the other events of Hezekiah's reign and his acts of devotion. are written in the vision of the prophet Isaiah. and in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.
Hezekiah rested with his fathers and was buried on the hill where the tombs of David's descendants are. And all Judah and the people of Jerusalem honored him when he died.
And Manasseh, his son, succeeded him as king. Hezekiah's obedience to God transformed culture. You and I don't have the power to transform the culture in which we live.
What we do have is the power to be obedient to God. And if we will choose obedience to God in an unrelenting way, in a courageous way, God will transform our culture.
You know, people say often. that I'm too political and I have very little interest in that because I don't think politics will fix us. I have a tremendous interest in the people of God being obedient to God.
And that means more than having a polite Bible study. It means we have to live out the tenets of our faith in the context of the culture in which we find ourselves.
And that will frequently put us at odds with political correctness and many of the values of a secular culture. And there will be a cost to that. And there will be labels affixed to you.
And often they won't be flattering, but it's worthwhile. Every generation has to make a choice for themselves. Hezekiah was only 25.
It was remarkable what he accomplished with his life. It's worth noting his son Manasseh. was one of the most evil kings of Israel.
And I've asked myself, I've walked around with this for several days and I thought, how does that happen? And I'll give you my opinion. You could disagree with me and we could both go to heaven.
But the text is very clear that it was a minority of the people that agreed with Hezekiah. And when it's time for Manasseh to lead, which is easier? To lead a minority of the people in a set of choices towards obedience to God.
or to face the majority of the people and give them permission, the license to be permissive? I think Manasseh took the easy way. I think he took the easy way.
And I think that's exactly the proposition that's before the contemporary church. Will we choose obedience to the Lord or will we try to please a secular culture?
There's many things you can do that you can biblically call good. You can be generous to the poor. You can be inclusive. You can be tolerant.
You can do many things that a secular culture will applaud and be very disobedient to God. Manasseh, some of you will remember, is the one who had Isaiah placed in a log and sawn in two.
It wasn't enough that he played to please the mob. He tried to destroy the voices that stood in opposition to godliness. We have a choice to make.
Whether we'll choose obedience to God. we're not powerless, folks. They're simple things. We can go back to our kitchen table. We can shuffle our calendar.
We can say to one another, no, this matters. If we'll do this, God will meet us. We have things to be overcome where we need God's help.
And yet we have discounted the simple ways that we can honor God in our lives. If we'll go back to those simple things that we know, I believe we will see expressions of God's power beyond anything we've ever experienced together.
It's an exciting time. And to the skeptics, I finished the outline. Boom. Stand with me. I know, once. But it's okay. It's a beginning.
And only one light exploded. Wow. You know, I learned from a mentor when I was a young person a very simple principle that has. has stayed with me.
That if you want God's best, you have to want God's best. Aren't I deep? And I would like to close with that as your invitation.
If you would like God's best in your life tonight, I don't believe it's complicated. You'll have to choose God's best. Which means you'd lay down anything else that you might put before that.
Could we make that commitment to the Lord? Let's pray.
Father, thank you. Thank you for your word, the access we have. Lord, that we can see the stories of those who have preceded us. And by your spirit, we can learn from their lives.
Lord, we live in a time when there is tremendous confusion and lawlessness and deception. And yet there are remarkable expressions of the spirit of God.
The truth is being told. It's being shouted from the housetops. It's being declared in the halls of power. We see the lives of. multiplied thousands of young people turning to you, Father.
We praise you for what we see you doing. And tonight, as we stand in your presence, we come in humility. Lord, forgive us for our pride.
Forgive us for those times when we have imagined ourselves so secure in our journey with you that we respond with arrogance. Lord, we choose to humble ourselves, to acknowledge you as our Lord and our King.
We choose obedience to you. The desire of our heart is your best in our lives to give you our best that we might see your best.
I thank you for what you're doing, that you're awakening your people. Lord, use our simple lives. Use our homes and our kitchen tables to bring transformation to the culture in which we live.
In Jesus' name, amen.