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We're going to be second Chronicles chapter 30. So if you have your Bibles, you can go there. If you're new to Cornerstone, we we go verse by verse on Wednesday nights and we happen to be in second Chronicles and then on Sundays we go kind of section by section or chapter by chapter and we happen to be in Colossians so on Sundays. Thank you for being here tonight. Thank you. For Those watching online, second Chronicles chapter 30 is where we are this evening. Let's have a word of prayer and then we'll we'll dig out a couple of chapters here. Lord, thank youk for your grace. Thank youk Lord for just yout mercy towards us. We are in need of youf mercy and you'd grace on a daily basis, Lord. And you'd are just such a loving, gracious Father. You're so patient with us. We thank youk, Lord that we can come here tonight and just give to youo our burdens and our concerns and our worries and you are our burden bearer. And we can also Lord, thank you for the joys that you impart to our hearts despite the craziness of our world. So we just invite you to be here. And we know your Word tells us where two or more are gathered in your name. There you are in our midst. So Lord, thank you for being here. Be glorified now in all that you hear and observe. We just want you to be honored as we study your Word together. It's in Jesus name we pray and everyone said Amen. So just to get our bearings straight and maybe if for no one else's benefit, for my own after being gone for several weeks. But here's the map we've been working with because you will well know if you've been here for our study of two Chronicles that the nation of Israel is now a divided nation. Since the days of Solomon they have been split. Ten tribes to the north make up the northern kingdom called Israel. The capital city of Israel was Samaria. And then there were two tribes, really two and a half tribes to the south that make up the southern kingdom of Judah. And the capital city there is Jerusalem. They each had their own king. There was a king to the north and a king to the south. There was not a single good king in the northern kingdom, not a single one. There were a few good kings in the southern kingdom. We're going to talk about one of them tonight as we continue in the story of Hezekiah. But here's something important to note is that in 722 BC the Assyrians come and besiege the Northern Kingdom of Israel. And for all intents and purposes, now the Northern Kingdom is done, there are many Jews who will be taken captive and they will be taken to Assyria. The Assyrians also wanted to. Whenever they conquered a land, they would repatriotize it by introducing their own Assyrian people into the culture, which the Assyrians will do. And you will remember that the combination of Assyrians and Jews, when they would intermarry, they produced a group of people called the Samaritans. And thus the Samaritans and Jews often did not get along. Remember the story of the woman at the well who was a Samaritan. She found it very interesting that Jesus, a Jew, would even talk to her because there was long standing prejudice between the two groups. But Jesus, of course, is not prejudiced, so he's talking to her. And the reason there was prejudice is because Jews, strictly speaking, saw Samaritans as half breeds. They saw them as having been intermarried with Assyrians. You're not fully Jewish like we are. And so that was the result of the Assyrians coming besieging the Northern Kingdom, intermarrying the Assyrians with the Jews and thus producing the Samaritans. And there was still a remnant of Jews in the Northern Kingdom. And we're going to read a little bit about how they are included in what's happening in the Southern kingdom of Judah. But there are no more kings to the north now because it's been subdued by the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians are a ruthless people. They're going to come against the southern kingdom too. And God will providentially protect the southern kingdom. But I mean, the Assyrians, they. Their strategy for war, I mean, it was just scorched earth. It was take people, captives, the. It was impale them on poles, it was skin the men alive and use their skin as wallpaper of their homes. I mean, we're talking a very ruthless and bloodthirsty people. So there was a lot of fear in both the northern and the southern kingdom, as you can imagine, about the Assyrians. But the Northern kingdom is now pretty much done. No king in the north, but we still have a king in the south. And, and that is Hezekiah. Now the southern kingdom's gonna have their own problems later and we're gonna be running into the Babylonians in the future. But for the meantime, for about 150 years, they're gonna have a measure of peace in the southern kingdom. And the king at this time, again is Hezekiah. His name in Hebrew is interesting because it is derived from two Hebrew words, Chazak. That's the hezek part. Hezekiah, Chazak. And then the last part of his name, Yah, is from Yahweh. So chazak means strength. And of course, Yahweh means God. So Hezekiah's name means the strength of God. The strength of God. And he is the 13th king of the southern kingdom of Judah. He begins his reign around 715bc. He will rule for 29 years until around 686bc. And he begins his reign in. If you were here for last Week's study, chapter 29. He begins his reign at the age of 25. And what I love about this guy, among several things, is that he does not allow his father, whose name was Ahaz, to ruin Hezekiah's desire to please God because his father was a wicked man. Ahaz was so wicked, he closed the temple of God. Can you imagine? It's like we're closing the church. Kind of sounds like Anthony Fauci again. But anyway, we're closing a church. He barred the temple of the Lord. He set up pagan altars on every corner in the streets of Jerusalem. He cut the sacred bronze articles of the temple and in pieces. And he desecrated the place. This is their own king. But he didn't want them to worship God anymore. He wanted them to worship these pagan gods like the nations around them. Hezekiah comes onto the throne and he's going to thankfully undo everything his father has done, because Hezekiah wants to live to please the Lord. And so even before we read verse one of chapter 30, I've got a good principle for us to take home. Here's number one. Your heritage does not determine your legacy. Your heritage does not determine your legacy. You can be thankful if you had a good heritage. If you've come from a family of, you know, a long line of believers and they have introduced you to Jesus at an early age, be thankful for that. But not everybody's come from a good heritage like Hezekiah. And yet he did not allow his heritage to determine the legacy that he would leave. Because he was a man after God's heart. Now, he had his own shortcomings. There's a thing at the end of his life that mars his testimony a little bit. He was not a perfect king, but by and large, he is considered one of the few good kings. And what I love about this guy is again, he's not going to allow his father to shape who he was because his dad was an evil king. He's going to become his own man, and he's going to become his own man who seeks the Lord. And you can be your own man or your own woman. It doesn't really matter what you've come from. What matters is what kind of legacy are you going to leave? Again, you can be thankful if you've come from a good heritage, but a lot of people don't. And so you all, all of us have an opportunity to start a new beginning and to leave a new legacy. And this is Hezekiah. So with that in mind, let's take a look here at chapter 30. He's already opened up the temple back up from his father, having barred its doors. That was chapter 29. And now in chapter 30, he's going to bring spiritual reform by implementing the Passover feast. And so here's verse one. And Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah. Now notice he's going to give word to the northern kingdom of Israel too. There's just a remnant of that are still there, even though the Assyrians have come and besieged the place. He sent to all Israel and Judah and also wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasseh that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the Lord God of Israel. For the king and his leaders and all the assembly in Jerusalem had agreed to keep the Passover in the second month, for they could not keep it at the regular time time because a sufficient number of priests had not consecrated themselves, nor had the people gathered together at Jerusalem. And the matter pleased the king and all the assembly. And so they resolved to make a proclamation throughout all Israel from Beersheba to Dan, that they should come to keep the Passover to the Lord God of Israel at Jerusalem, since they had not done it for a long time in the prescribed manner. Now let's pause here for a minute. It doesn't say exactly how long they had gone without celebrating Passover, but we get a clue if you just jump ahead to near the end of this chapter. Look at verse 26 for just a minute. In verse 26 it says, so there was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, there had not there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. That seems to tie with the events of chapter 30. So when you go back here and you, and you read how it says they hadn't practiced Passover in a long time and you put it together that it might have been as long as since the reign of Solomon. We're talking 250 years, everybody. It's been 250 years since they practiced Passover. Now, again, what is Passover? I mentioned some of these feasts on Sunday. Passover was a commemoration of God's deliverance of the Jewish people out of slavery. They had spent 400 years as slaves in Egypt. And God miraculously provided for their departure. He had to work on Pharaoh a series of 10 plagues. But eventually, Pharaoh reluctantly allowed the Hebrew people to leave. And the last of those ten plagues that God used to get Pharaoh to release the Jews was the plague of death. And God determined to take the firstborn unless your home was marked with the blood of the lamb, as I said, on Sunday, it was all foreshadowing Christ. So they took. They. They sacrificed a lamb, and they would take a hyssop branch and they would dip it in the blood. And then they would line the doors and the. The door frame and the lentil of their homes. And then death would pass over those homes. And. And they would be preserved. And thus Passover, or Pesach in Hebrew, the death would pass over those homes and death would not come to those homes. So they were remembering this. Now, it says there that here in 2nd Chronicles 30, that they implemented Passover again in the second month. And it says it wasn't in the regular month. The regular month of Passover was the first month on the Jewish calendar. It was the month of Nisan. But when Hezekiah comes to the throne and he has to, you know, from scratch, start to, you know, reopen the temple and bring spiritual reform and reinstate these feasts like they're off the calendar. But Hezekiah's like, you know what? It doesn't matter. We haven't been practicing Passover for, again, if the implication is true, for like 250 years. So even though it's the second month instead of the first month, we're celebrating Passover. And all the leaders are like, yes, and amen. So he puts word out like, hey, come to Jerusalem. We're going to celebrate Passover, and we're going to remember what the Lord has done for us. And so verse six says, and then the runners went throughout all Israel and Judah with the letters from the king and his leaders. These are like, you know, Evites, right? Okay. And spoke according to the command of the king. And here was the invitation, children of Israel, return to the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. And then he will return to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. And do not be like your fathers and your brethren who trespassed against the Lord God of their fathers so that he gave them up to desolation, as you see now. Do not be stiff necked as your fathers were. All right, you get the imagery there. Like, stiff necked is like, you know, proud and resist it. And we're not. We're not going to yield to the Lord. He says, don't be stiff necked like your fathers were, but yield your. There's three things here notice. Yield yourselves to the Lord and enter his sanctuary, which he has sanctified forever, and serve the Lord your God, that the fierceness of his wrath may turn away from you. For if you return to the Lord and your brethren and your children will be treated with compassion by those who lead them captive so that they may come back to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn his face from you if you return to him. So this is the word that Hezekiah puts out. Sends messengers to announce all of this throughout the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom of Judah. And I love this part there in verse eight, I mentioned, like, three directives there. Yield yourselves to the Lord. The word yield in the Hebrew is Nathan. It is spelled just like the guy's name, Nathan. Nathan. And it means to yield or to commit or to submit. Nathan in the Greek. Nathan in the Greek means gift, but in the Hebrew it means yield. So take your pick. If you're named Nathan, that's what your name means. And he says, yield yourselves to the Lord, enter his sanctuary and serve the Lord your God. It's like three simple things that we can do, right? Yield to God, go to church and serve the Lord. Like, commit your life to the Lord. Be in regular fellowship, go to the house of the Lord, and then serve the Lord. And then. And so that's his directive. It's the same thing that applies today. And Hezekiah notes here. He says, look, there's the reality of the fierce side of God, that God is a God of justice and he has wrath. And if we sin against him and if we disobey him, we can be subject to that fierce wrath. However, he says, if you return to him, guess what? You're gonna be met by what he says there at the end of verse nine. A God who is gracious and merciful. He will not turn his face from you if you return to him. This is very similar to what David wrote in Psalm 103. 8, when he said, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy. Some translations say, abounding in love. And so Hezekiah is just saying, look, this is the character of God. He is both fierce and. But he's also gracious. He has wrath, but he also has mercy. So you can choose which face of God do you want? And it has to do with how willing you are to yield to him. If you yield to him, then you're gonna encounter the gracious, merciful face of God. You resist him, you disobey him. There's gonna be the fierce side of God. So he said, this is your choice. But he's calling them, return to the Lord. He's asking for spirit spiritual reform again in the whole nation. And so in verse 10, it says, and so the runners passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, as far as Zebulun. So this is up in the north, notice. But they laughed at them and mocked them. This is the talking about the remnant of those who were in the north. So they're just, like, cynical. They're jaded now at this point, they're bitter. Like, they've lost their northern kingdom. And now they have these runners coming up here saying, hey, come to Israel, Return to the Lord. And they're just like, whatever. And they're mocking them and they're laughing at them. Verse 11. Nevertheless, some from Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves. So some did and came to Jerusalem. And also the hand of God was on Judah, the south, to give them singleness of heart to obey the command of the king and the leaders at the word of the Lord. So you see, Hezekiah reaches out to the remnant in the north. Most of them just sneered. They just laughed. They mocked. Some, however, did humble themselves. They came down to Jerusalem. But the southern kingdom of Judah, they were all on the same page. They were all like, yeah, we got to do this. We got to get right with the Lord. We got to return to him. And so verse 13 says, now many people, a very great assembly, gathered at Jerusalem to keep the feast of unleavened bread. In the second month, they arose and took away the altars that were in Jerusalem. And they took away all the incense altars and cast them into the brook Kidron. Now, that sounds bizarre. Like, why would they knock down these altars? Because these were pagan altars. These were still leftover altars from the reign of Ahaz the Father of Hezekiah. And so people are going throughout the countryside because God's getting a hold of their heart. So, like, we're going to rid our land of these pagan influences. And it's a good reminder for all of us, you know, to take inventory of our lives, rid things from our lives that have. The worldly influence has crept in. And from time to time, we have to examine our own hearts, our lives, our homes. And we have to look at stuff and say, okay, what stuff here is of the worldly influence that is displeasing to the Lord. And then, you know, deal with those things as the Lord convicts you. That's what was happening here. Spiritual revival is happening in the heart. And when your heart begins to change, you can begin to see things that you realize that before you had accepted as inconsequential. Now you realize this is convicting. Like, these things are not pleasing to the Lord. And so they're purging the land of these things. And notice there, this is the feast of unleavened bread. The feast of unleavened bread followed immediately the feast of Passover. And again, you know, this is interesting. We're talking about this again tonight. We mentioned this. On Sunday, you have Passover and unleavened bread. Unleavened bread was a feast of seven days. Passover was one day. So together it's eight days. But the feast of unleavened bread was tied to passover because when they were allowed to leave Egypt, the Hebrew people, after being enslaved, they had to leave in haste. You know, when Pharaoh gave the green light, they're like, well, we gotta get out of here before he changes his mind. And so they didn't have time to add yeast to their bread for their bread to rise. And they just took. They just took the dough without the yeast. And it was unleavened bread. So it was bread without yeast. So this was all part of the remembrance of God's deliverance from Egypt, because they left in haste and they didn't have time for their bread to rise. And so they would celebrate the feast of unleavened bread. And as I mentioned, on Sunday, you know, leaven is a picture of sin. It's a type of sin. And so this was a high holy day. This was a celebration to remember God's deliverance, But it was also to be reminded of the effects of leaven yeast. You know, how yeast just works through bread and, you know, and it just begins to invade the dough. And thus you have bread. I've told this story many times. So I'm not going to tell the whole story. But, you know, the friendship bread thing, right? It just always reminds me of the friendship bread back in the 90s. You know, somebody gave us one of the. A starter ball. Remember those? Like, this was a trend back, like in the 90s. They'll give you a little starter ball, and then you have to nurture it, feed it, like, water it. You have to put it in Tupperware, burp it, all this stuff. Remember me telling the story And Terri, we were expecting. I think it was Austin. She was pregnant with Austin. We had these little starter things all set up in our kitchen. And then Terri goes into labor. I'm off to the hospital with her. I forget about friendship bread. I come back. I come back. Friendship bread became demon bread. It had exploded all over our kitchen. I'm not making it up. Blew the lid off the Tupperwares. It was on the ceiling. It was gross. And I tried not to in my heart curse the friend who gave it to us. Friendship bread. I don't know. That was just a mean joke. But anyway, so. But. But, you know, it was a very visual thing for me to know. Like, yeah, this is. This is how sin works. Like, it makes a mess. It gets everywhere. And so unleavened bread, it was this reminder, like, get. Get the sin out of your life. This was a call to purity. This is a call to holiness. And so they would have to get all the. Any crumbs, yeast, anything out of their house to remember this call to holiness and purity. So they're celebrating the feast of unleavened bread. They're celebrating all of that. And it's the second month again, because they missed the first month. But they're just making up for all of it. And it says here in verse 15, and then they slaughtered the Passover lambs. On the 14th day of the second month. The priests and the Levites were ashamed. In other words, you know, they were convicted and sanctified themselves and brought the burnt offerings to the house of the Lord. They stood in their place according to their custom, according to the law of Moses, the man of God. The priests sprinkled the blood received from the hand of the Levites from. For there were many in the assembly who had not sanctified themselves. Therefore, the Levites had charge of the slaughter of the Passover lambs for everyone who was not clean to sanctify them to the Lord. For a multitude of the people, many from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover contrary to what was written. I'll explain this. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, may the good Lord provide atonement for everyone who prepares his heart to seek God, the Lord, God of his fathers, though he is not cleansed, according to the purification of the sanctuary. And then verse 20 says, and the Lord listened to Hezekiah and healed the people. Here's what's going on again. If the assumption is true, that's been 250 years since they've practiced Passover. Nobody living knows how to do this. So they're like, okay, now we got to look here in the manual. This is, you know, let's get out Leviticus and let's take a look here, and numbers and Deuteronomy. Let's look at the Mosaic law and figure out, how are we to celebrate Passover? What are the requirements? What are the stipulations? So the priests, they hadn't even sanctified themselves. They had not even go through. Gone through these rites of purification to be cleansed, to be able to be vessels in the temple of the Lord, that they could properly participate in the Passover slaughtering of the lambs. And so there were few priests who had purified themselves and sanctified themselves. And the Levites were assisting in these roles. And they're slaughtering lambs. And then people are coming and they're participating in this, and they're not properly cleansed. And all of a sudden they realize, you know, we haven't been doing this the prescribed way according to the law. This is new to all of them. And Hezekiah prays to the Lord, and he's like. And I'm paraphrasing is like, okay, Lord, we haven't done this in a really long time. And so some people are not doing this according to the rites of purification and to the letter of the law. Would you please have mercy on them? And it says, and God heard the prayer of Hezekiah and he healed the people. In other words, they did not suffer the consequences that they could have. But again, see, God is not a legalistic God. We talked about legalism on Sunday, too. He gives mercy even when we don't deserve it. And he gave mercy here in this situation. And what I think is noteworthy is a principle we can take away, that God has mercy on our ignorance. God has mercy on our ignorance. He. He had mercy for them because they just didn't know better. It wasn't that they were willfully Violating things. They. They just. This was new to them. They hadn't been practicing this for a long time. And so God had mercy on them. And that is comforting because, you know, Jesus died for our intentional and unintentional sins. So we're covered by the blood of Jesus and we can cry out to God for his mercy and his forgiveness. But I love this aspect of our heavenly Father in that when people are ignorant about things, he is merciful towards them. You know, the Bible says in second Peter 2:21, it is better never to have known than to have known the truth and walked away. In other words, we are most accountable according to whatever light we have been exposed to. And so, you know, sometimes we get these. We get our underwear and theological knots because people start to say, well, what about the person who's never heard. What about the guy on the island, you know, has never heard the gospel and what happens to the guy on the island? And I always find it interesting when somebody is, like, wanting to know about the guy on the island because it's like, you know, rather than for the moment worrying about the guy on the island. What about you? Like, it's often a. Like, it's often like this smoke screen that's just like, you know, okay, what about the guy on the island? Well, what about you? God will take care of the guy on the island. And there seems to be mercy for ignorance. Now, look, I'm not saying that there's another way to heaven. I know we have to get there through Christ. But it's the idea that God is merciful regarding our ignorance, and you see it here. So we can just trust our heavenly Father that he, you know, when we think about the people in the world who have not heard the gospel, we can just trust our heavenly Father that part of his character and nature is he's a merciful God. And so verse 21 says. And so the children of Israel who were present at Jerusalem kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with great gladness. And the Levites and the priests praised the Lord day by day, singing to the Lord. Notice this. Accompanied by loud instruments. Now, some of you complained that our worship is too loud. I just want you to know it's biblical. Everybody. Right there, right there you have it. I'm gonna get emails on that one. I know. All right. And Hezekiah gave encouragement to all the Levites who taught the good knowledge of the Lord. And they ate throughout the feast seven days, offering peace offerings and making confession to the Lord God of their fathers. I just made a notation in my Bible that when you look at all of that section there, okay, they worshiped because it talks about the priests praising the Lord, singing, accompanied by loud instruments. They got teaching because it says the Levites taught the good knowledge of the Lord. They had fellowship because they're offering these offerings and they're making confession. You know, they're pouring out their hearts to the Lord. It's like, I made a note like, okay, you got worship, teaching offerings, fellowship, confession. This is church. This is church. They're coming together here. And this is like, what we still do, verse 23. Then the whole assembly agreed to keep the feast another seven days. They're like, you know what? This week has been great. Why don't we just extend it for another week? Like, okay, sounds good. And they kept it another seven days with gladness. For Hezekiah, king of Judah, gave to the assembly a thousand bulls and. And 7,000 sheep. And the leaders gave to the assembly a thousand bulls and 10,000 sheep. That's. That's a lot of animals. And a great number of priests sanctified themselves. The whole assembly of Judah rejoiced. Now I want you to circle these words back. In verse 21, it says, and they kept. They kept the feast another seven days with gladness. You can circle that. And now we're here in verse 25. The whole assembly of Judah rejoiced. You can circle that word. Also. The priests and the Levites, all the assembly that came from Israel, the sojourners who came from the land of Israel, and those who dwelt in Judah. And so there was great joy. Circle that. There it is again in Jerusalem. For since the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. And then the priests, the Levites arose and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came up to his holy dwelling place, to heaven. So I have one last note here from chapter 30. And when you see, like, the culmination of all this celebration, Passover, feast of unleavened bread, they're like, let's do it another seven days. So now they're still celebrating, and they're having this feast again for seven more days. You see their gladness. They rejoiced. There was great joy. You just get this picture of such enthusiasm that the people have returned to the Lord their God in a wonderful way, where Hezekiah has ushered in this great spiritual reform. So there's great revival. He's opened up the temple. They've torn down these pagan altars. They've thrown them into the Kidron Valley. They've reinstituted Passover. They are celebrating the feast of Unleavened Bread. They're extending that celebration. And everybody is just happy. They're just happy. They're just rejoicing in the Lord. And it is a good reminder to us that true enthusiasm is in God. That is the root for the word enthusiasm. N that's where we get the word enthusiasm from. Entheos, en meaning in. In the Greek theos, meaning God. That's the very definition of enthusiasm. When you are enthusiastic, Real enthusiasm comes from being in God. And that's what we see here with these people. They were happy and joyful because they were in the Lord. That's where true happiness and joy and enthusiasm comes from, is in the Lord. We've got a few more minutes. Let's go a little bit into chapter 31. Now, when all this was finished, all Israel who were present went out to the cities of Judah and broke the sacred pillars in pieces, cut down the wooden images and threw down the high places and altars from all Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all. This is all still any bad remnants of idols. They're just destroying it. And then all the children of Israel returned to their own cities, every man to his possession. And Hezekiah appointed the divisions of the priests and the Levites according to their divisions, each man according to his service, the priests and the Levites for burnt offerings and peace offerings, to serve, to give thanks and to praise in the gates of the camp of the Lord. The king also appointed a portion of his possessions for the burnt offerings for the morning and evening burnt offerings, the burnt offerings for the sabbaths and the new moons and the set feasts, as it is written in the law of the Lord. Moreover, he commanded the people who dwelt in Jerusalem to contribute support for the priests and the Levites that they might devote themselves to the law of the Lord. And as soon as the commandment was circulated, the children of Israel brought in abundance the first fruits circle, the first fruits of grain and wine, oil and honey, and of all the produce of the field. And they brought in abundantly the tithe of everything. And the children of Israel and Judah who dwelt in the cities of Judah brought the tithe of oxen and sheep, also the tithe of holy things that were consecrated to the Lord their God. They laid in heaps. So they're just. They're just bringing in an Abundance. Now, again, I mentioned on Sunday, this just ties in. Passover is followed by Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is followed by the Feast of Firstfruits. They're celebrating now the Feast of First Fruits. It's consistent with their own schedule of the feast on the Jewish calendar. And the Feast of First Fruits was waving a portion of the early harvest, thanking God that there was more to come. And as I said, on Sunday, Passover is when Jesus was crucified. Unleavened bread is when he was buried, and First Fruits is when he rose from the dead. All consistent with the Jewish calendar. Because these feasts, as we read in Colossians chapter two, are a shadow of the things to come. But the reality, however, is found in Christ. You know, your shadow is not the substance of who you are. It's only just this outline of who you are. That was the way the Jewish feasts were. They weren't the substance. They were just the outline to point us to Christ. That's why his life, his death, burial and resurrection are all consistent with these Jewish feasts, because they were all a shadow pointing to Christ in the long run, and he fulfilled it all. So they're just doing what's a part of the Jewish feast on the calendar. And Hezekiah has brought this kind of spiritual reform, and they're just now bringing their offerings to the house of the Lord. You know, again, when God gets ahold of your heart, then there are changes that naturally begin to occur. As I said a minute ago, you begin to do inventory of your life. And you think, you know, there's some things I shouldn't be doing, some places I shouldn't be going, some stuff I shouldn't be watching. And you start to purge your life of certain kind of pagan types of things in your own lives. And then you also take on the heart of God. God is the most generous of anybody. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. So one of the things that also happens, when we get our hearts right with the Lord, we don't just simply purge our lives of things that shouldn't be there. We become generous like God. These people started just having generous hearts. We're just going to start to praise God and bring into the house of the Lord the tithe, which is the 10th. We'll talk more about it next week. I know some people. Well, no, not next week. We got the gen. I'm excited about the Gen Z night because the Lord is doing a new thing in that generation. But in two weeks we come back to this passage. Some people get all wigged out about the tithe, like we're under the New Covenant now. You know, don't talk about the tithe. And I always say, I always say, are you saying that because you want to do more than a tenth? Usually not. People are saying that because they want to get away with doing much less. But when you look at the New Covenant, does the covenant do less or more than the old covenants? Anyway, we'll talk about it more just so I can get more emails. And that's for two weeks from tonight. Let's pause there and pray. Lord, thank you for your grace in our lives. And as we look at this story of Hezekiah bringing great reform to the nation of Israel, Lord, we pray that we would also, in a similar way, look into our own hearts. What are the things we need to purge? What are the things, Lord, that you would show us in our own hearts and lives that we need to get rid of because it's displeasing to you. And so, Lord, we pray that we would regularly be examining our own hearts, that you would, by your Holy Spirit, show us those things that we might live in a way that brings you honor and glory and praise. So thank you for your word tonight. Be with us as we go to our respective homes and as we stay for fellowship. We just love you, Lord, and we thank you that you first loved us and gave us your son Jesus. And it's in Jesus name that we pray these things. And everyone said, amen. Amen.