The "Heart" of Passover

I hope everyone is having a very good Sabbath. I want to welcome any visitors that we have with us here today. Certainly those on the webcast. Good to have you with us. Let me thank the ladies, too. That was beautiful, as usual, and a very nice, very nice intro to the sermon. So we are here today, just less than three weeks until Passover in the days of Unleavened Bread. We have been preparing, I know, in many ways. I hope it's been on all of our hearts and minds what we are about to enter into as we enter into the Passover season and the Days of Unleavened Bread season.

So today I want to talk about things that have to do with that, but I want to start in a place back in Isaiah with a very familiar story of you. The last couple of times I've spoken, I've been talking about the kings of Isaiah and how God had Isaiah learn from these kings that he served under. And of course, we've talked about Uzziah and Jotham and Ahaz. And the fourth one of those kings was Hezekiah. They were all individuals in their own right.

They all had their own issues to overcome, if you will, and they were all different in their own right. And Hezekiah was one of those good kings. He ascended to the throne of Judah at a time that it had a lot of trouble.

He ascended at a time that his father had taken the nation away from Israel. And as you know his story, he brought Israel or Judah back. But in chapter 38 of Isaiah, we find a story we're all familiar with. Maybe we haven't thought about it in a while. When Hezekiah, you know, was about to die, he had a disease and he sent for Isaiah. And Isaiah came and he said, it's God's will, Hezekiah, that you're going to die.

Now, if we pick up the story in chapter 38 of Isaiah down in verse 3, Hezekiah, of course, was upset as you and I would be, too, if we were told we're gonna you're gonna die. And it's against God's will. There were things that come into our mind. But here in verse 3, Hezekiah says in verse 2, he turned his face toward the wall and prayed to the eternal and said, Remember now, O Lord, I pray, how I have walked before you in truth and with a loyal heart and have done what is good in your sight.

And he wept bitterly. He wanted to go on living. But he said some things in that prayer we should take note of. He said, God, I've walked before you in truth. And indeed, his life and what he did as he came to the throne, he did walk in truth. He sought the truth and he brought the truth back into Judah.

And he said, I have walked with you with a loyal heart, a loyal heart. And I want to pause on that word loyal for just a moment, because in the New King James it says loyal. But if any of you have the Old King James that you're reading from, you'll see that it says a perfect heart. And sometimes we shy away from the word perfect. But the actual when you look at the Hebrew word in Strongs, it actually does mean perfect or made perfect or complete or perfected. And so when Hezekiah was saying this to God, he goes, I've walked before you in truth and I've walked before you with a perfect heart.

That's quite a statement. And God heard what Hezekiah said and he responded. You know that he sent Isaiah back and he said, I've heard your prayer. I'm adding 15 more years to your life. And then God punctuated, if you will, the promise that he gave to Hezekiah. He didn't ask for a sign, but in verse 8 he did a tremendous miracle to show Hezekiah what I mean I say. And I think also indicated to Hezekiah, I'm with you and I have the power, the power to be with you.

In verse 8, it says, I will I behold I will bring the shadow of the sun to sundial which has gone down with the sun on the sundial of Ahaz, 10 degrees backward. So the sun returned 10 degrees on the dial by which it had gone down. That's quite a miracle if you stop and think about it.

If we know that the earth rotates as we do, some say it's a thousand miles an hour, I don't know if that's true or not. God knows what is true, but it rotates. So in order for God to do this, with an invention from Ahaz, right, his father had the sundial, so he could actually prove what was happening. So the earth would have had to stop and reverse and they could see that happen on the sundial as it went backwards.

Now that's simply impossible, right, for anyone who understands science. If the earth stopped today, I mean, who knows what would happen, right? If it stopped rotating, we would be flying everywhere. None of us would be in the same place we are today. But none of them felt a thing, but they knew it happened. It shows the power of God, a tremendous power that we can't even imagine or fathom. God has that power. He can make all things happen, and that's the God we worship. And that's the God who, when Hezekiah said, I follow you in truth, and I've walked with you with a perfect heart. I want to go back and just explore that word perfect a little bit and show you some other places where it is in the Old Testament. Let's go back to 1 Chronicles 29.

1 Chronicles 29. And here we have David. David, of course, you know, wanted to build the temple for God. But God said, no, it won't be you, David. It'll be your son Solomon. David didn't mope. He didn't complain. He didn't try to convince God otherwise. Instead, David moved forward in this chapter. He's like, fine, if I can't build it, we're going to take an offering, and I'm going to give so that that temple can be built. And so that is where we pick it up in 1 Chronicles 29. Let's look at verse 18. David is talking about hearts here as well. In verse 18, he says, O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, our fathers keep this forever in the attempt of the thoughts of the heart of your people and fix their heart toward you. Now, when we talk about heart, I know you all know, but let me refresh our minds. We're not just talking about this little organ in our body that ticks and keeps us alive. But when the Bible talks about heart, it's talking about the inner man. It's talking about our will, our intent, who we are inside. It's the thing that keeps us going. What's our intent? Where are we headed? What are we doing? What are we about? It keeps us spiritually alive. And that's what he's talking about here. God, fix their heart on you. Keep this intent of their heart always on you. And down in verse 19, he says, and give my son Solomon a loyal heart.

The same word translated, their loyal, old King James perfect, should be perfect. Give my son Solomon a perfect heart. To do what? Keep your commandments and your testimonies and your statutes. To do all these things and to build a temple for which I have made provision.

Let him follow you. Let his heart be intent on following everything that you say.

Have him build the temple in exactly the way that you have outlined for it to be built.

Do it your way. Have him have that heart and that intent toward you, that perfect heart that is focused on you and doing your will. Let's go forward into the book of 2 Chronicles, this time over in chapter 8.

We pick it up and Solomon has completed the building of the physical temple.

You know that God was very pleased with it because they did it exactly to the standard that he had set.

And down in verse 16 of 2 Chronicles 8, it says, Now all the work of Solomon was well ordered from the day of the foundation of the house of the Lord until it was finished, done in exactly the right order. So the house of the Lord was completed, it says in the New King James. In the Old King James, it says now, so the house of the Lord was perfected. It was made complete. It was done exactly the way God said. They worked on it those seven years. They did it the way God said, and it came to the point where it was perfected, built to God's standard. We go a few chapters forward in 2 Chronicles, chapter 16. And there's many, many places, and I'm just highlighting a few of them, to get the flavor of this word, perfect heart, that Hezekiah talked about. In 16 of 2 Chronicles, in verse 9, it says, The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him, perfect to Him. It's the same word. To show himself loyal or to show himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect to Him.

And then He chides those who have done foolishly whose heart wasn't perfect toward God, who didn't recognize His power, who didn't appreciate His power, who weren't working toward a perfect and a complete heart, or a ready heart, to do what God would have done. I'm not going to turn there, but you can think about Hebrews 12-23. It might make you think of the work that God is doing in us when He talks about the church that He's called us to, and He talks about us, just men who are made perfect, because what God is doing in our lives now, He's got us on a trail. He's got us on a plan that we should be very key on following as we build our spiritual houses individually, build our spiritual house collectively, that we're doing it in the way He said, and that we, along the way, are letting Him through His Holy Spirit build in us a perfect, a complete heart. When Hezekiah asked God, give me life, give me more life, He was able to say, and God responded, I know your heart. Yes, you did walk before me in truth. What I asked you to do, you did, and He did quite a work. Let's go forward to 2 Chronicles 29. Let's look at Hezekiah, because he lived at a unique time when he came to the throne of Judah. The kingdom at that time was a mess. His father, A, has, if you recall, we've talked about him. At every juncture, he resisted God. He wanted nothing to do with Him, even when God said, I'll give you any sign, any sign you ask, give me, so I can show you that I'm with you. And He said, I don't want it. And His entire life, His entire reign, He rejected God, resisted God, and Judah became a mess. If we look at, well, I've said chapter 29. Let's look at chapter 28, verse 19 here for a second, because we can kind of see what the legacy of A has. Hezekiah's father was. In verse 19, it says, the Lord brought Judah low because of A has king of Israel, for he had encouraged moral decline in Judah and had been continually unfaithful to God. So then we have Hezekiah. Hezekiah come to the throne in chapter 29. It says he's 25 years old when he took the throne. But Hezekiah was pretty astute. He kind of watched what his father was doing. He saw the trouble that Judah was in because of him. He knew that his father had turned against God at every juncture, and he might have followed in the same ways of his father, but he didn't. In chapter 29, it says Hezekiah, verse 2 of chapter 29, he did what was right in the sight of the Lord according to all that his father David had done.

Oh, he had the right heart. What did Christ say about David? A man after my own heart.

And the Bible leaves this legacy of Hezekiah. He did all according to all that David had done. In the first year, we see some of the things he did as soon as he took that throne as he began to turn to God. In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. He brought in the priests and the Levites and gathered them in the east square and said to them, Hear me, Levites. Sanctify yourselves. Sanctify the house of the Lord, God of your fathers, and carry out the rubbish from the holy place. It's been polluted. It's been allowed to just go terrible. Go in there and clean this place up. Put it back in the way that God wanted it to be. For our fathers, verse 6, have trespassed and done evil in the eyes of the eternal, our God. They've forsaken him. They've turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the Lord, and they've turned their backs on him. They've shut up the doors of the vestibule. They've put out the lamps. They haven't burned incense or offered burnt offerings in the holy place of the God of Israel. That's why, verse 8, the wrath of the Lord fell upon Judah in Jerusalem, and he has given them up to trouble, to desolation, and to jeering, as you see, with your eyes.

Oh, he had it nailed. He knew why Judah was in the trouble that it was. He knew the state that it was in. We can recount that a little bit of what they were in because we can see a parallel at the time that Hezekiah took the throne and what the state of Judah was at that time to the states of the world that we live in today. At the time that Hezekiah took the throne, Judah was being faced by all sorts of enemies. Assyria, of course, was the overwhelming force on earth. Everyone feared Assyria. They were a cruel nation. Everyone feared them. But you also had the Edomites. You also had the Philistines. You had other nations coming against Judah as well. As you read through chapter 28, it was a time of trouble. No matter what trouble came, Ahaz rejected God, was not going to turn back to Him. He gave away wealth. He gave away whatever He needed to and looked to the world for His salvation, if you will. We read that Ahaz even turned to worshiping false gods. Even child sacrifice was part of that. We've already read that under His domain, under His rulership, there was moral decline in Judah. And Hezekiah looked at all that and realized, we're headed in the wrong direction. This is going nowhere. The only answer is to turn back to God.

Now pause for a moment to think about the state of the world we live in today.

People will acknowledge that we're in a state of decline in the United States. No one, no one, could deny in or out of the church that the nation is in a state of moral decline, such as which we would have never been able to imagine five years ago. I mean, all the things that go on in the world today, as someone had said five years ago, this is what's going to be happening. These people with these issues are going to be held up as champions and heroes and whatever, and we're going to honor them. In fact, we're going to just create this kind of sensation about them. We would have said that's not even possible, and yet we see it happening all around us. We see powers in the world aligning against us. We have China that everyone kind of knows is this power that's out there. Russia, of course, we're in a war with Ukraine, a kind of a proxy war, they call it.

We have in the background, we have North Korea, we have Iran, we have nations that hate us that are just biding their time. It appears waiting for something to happen where they can trouble us, just like Judah was being troubled by all their foes at that time.

Do we live in a time of child sacrifice like they did? Well, yes. You know, abortion is alive and well. It's been with this country for 50-some years, and recently it's been almost elevated to a cult status. We now have abortion laws in some states that allow children to be to be aborted at full term or close to full term. What are they sacrificing to?

Self-will, self-will, my own convenience, I don't want this baby, sacrifice it, and there's almost a defiance in the air now about abortion, and it's been championed as well. So we have all these things going on around us, and the nation moves further and further away from God, to the point that, like we read in Tezukiah's time, people will mock, people will jeer. If you tell them that you adhere to the laws of the Bible or whatever, they probably look at you and wonder, you know, when are you going to wake up, right? So we live in times very similar to the time that Hezekiah lived. The state that Judah was in, we can compare ourselves directly to it. Hezekiah was able to size up the situation and say, this is awful. The nation is doomed. We need to turn back to God. He is our only salvation. He is the only answer to the problems that we have. So indeed, Hezekiah commissions his people, and they go in, and they get to work. Now it happens to be in the same time of year that we are in right now. So let's drop down to verse 10 here in chapter 29, and see what Hezekiah says as he's instructing his people. He says, it's in my heart. Ah, it's in my heart. This is what I want to do. This is not something I'm just doing because I've been told it's the right thing to do. This is where my intent is. This is where my will is. This is where this is who I am. It's in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel that His fierce wrath may turn away from us. Now we all made that covenant with God. At some time in the past, God called us, opened our minds. We responded to Him, and we made a covenant with Him, and said, we will turn back to Him. We recognized our way of life was going nowhere. We were basically dead men walking until we accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And we told God at that time when we were baptized, wherever you go, whatever you say, I will follow you. I will follow you wherever. I will do whatever. I will throw out the trash in my life, and I will put in the things of your way of life. And that's exactly what they did here during the course of Ezechiah's reign as they were preparing the temple and going back to it. We'll see that as they went through it, one of the things they did was carry the trash out. They began with sizing up or improving the appearance of the outside of the temple, but they knew that isn't all they could do. So let's go further down here. I'm going to read verse 11 as well because this is something that Ezechiah said to his people. God would say it to every one of us sitting in this room today and everyone who is listening and ever will listen to this sermon. In verse 11, he says, My sons, he may say to us, My sons or my children, do not be negligent now, for the Lord has chosen you to stand before him, to serve him, and that you should minister to him and burn incense. Well, burn incense is a physical thing. Today we have the sweet incense of our prayers and the way we live our life that rise up before God as we read in Revelation. So we do it in a spiritual way, but that was what God has called us to. And you and I said this is what we would do. This is who we are. This is what we committed to. And he would warn us or admonish us or remind us, don't be negligent. Don't be negligent.

You might think of Hebrews 2 where it talks about, you know, we should not neglect so great a calling, that we shouldn't drift away. We should keep ourselves anchored to the truth and not allow ourselves to drift away and neglect so great a call that God has called us to.

Same instructions that Hezekiah is giving here. And so as you read down through the verses, you find that they, you know, in verse 15, they sanctified themselves, they got themselves ready, they went according to the commandment of the king at the words of the Lord to cleanse his house. And the priests, verse 16, went into the inner part of the house to cleanse it. And they brought out all the debris that they found in the temple to the court of the house of the Lord, and the Levites took it out, carried it to the brook, where they pretty much trashed it. So they cleaned up the outside, but that wasn't enough, right? They had to go into the inside of the temple. What's on the inside of that house? There's trash in there that is accumulated over there. There's trash that needs to be thrown out. And we need to get the instruments that God had ordained cleaned up, sanctified, put into practice again. All the stuff that's been allowed to come into that temple that shouldn't be there needs to be taken out. And as we read these words, and we read about temples, and we read about houses, always remember what God is doing with us today. Building a house in us individually, building a house in us collectively, and as we are just a few weeks away from Passover, as these people were doing, He would be having us clean up our houses, right? That's part of what we're told to do.

Clean up those houses, what's in them, and get rid of the trash that has been allowed to come in there. Get rid of that and put back in the truth of God. Put back in the way of God.

Keep your finger there in 2 Chronicles. Let's go forward to the New Testament in 1 Corinthians.

1 Corinthians. We'll see that when Hezekiah and his people are doing this, it's all in the same time of year that we're in. It'll say later on, it's the first day of the first month. First day of the first month in God's calendar happens to be next Thursday. And so we're right here in the same timeframe as they're preparing. I don't know if they were aware that they were preparing for Passover and what God was working with them, but in this story of Hezekiah and what they did in this instance, it's a very good blueprint of how we approach or should approach Passover. In 1 Corinthians 11, you know, verse 27, God says this about our preparation for Passover. This is something we do now. This isn't something we do, you know, on the day of Passover or the day before Passover. This is something we do in preparation, just like Hezekiah's people, as they're preparing, it doesn't get done in a day, takes them several days to do it. Verse 27 says, We know what the ordinance laws are of Passover. We'll come back to verses 23 to 26 later. Whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord in an unworthy manner. So what's the manner that we do? What's the preparation that we do? The preparation that we do is much like what the Levites were doing, right? They went in, Hezekiah said, Get in there, get in there, look at that temple, get rid of the trash, let's get it ready so that we can worship God in the way that he wants to be worshipped again. And carry that trash out, get it way away from there, just throw it into the brook, kidrin. And so God tells us the same thing. Unworthy manner doesn't mean that we don't take the Passover if we're not worthy. Christ paid for our sins, He died for all of us.

But the manner is what He's looking for. Where is our heart? Where is our heart? What are we doing with our heart and where is our heart? So He says in verse 28, Let a man examine himself. Well, examine is what's inside of me? What's inside of my mind? What's on the outside? What do I need to clean up? What needs to be brought back into? How do I focus on this time of year that God has put us in? Now, self-examination should happen all through the year, but God has ordained this time that He wants us to be looking at ourselves as we go to Him at Passover and recommit ourselves to Him. And remember, remember as it says in the prior verses here, remember His death, acknowledge His death, acknowledge what we committed to Him to do, remind ourselves of that and what we are here for to do His will and to build the individual and collective houses to His standards. Let a man examine himself and then let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

That's for now. Same command, one spiritual for us, the same thing that Hezekiah and his team is doing back here in 2 Chronicles 29.

We're going to see that God approved, very much approved of how they handled this whole situation. So let's go back to 2 Chronicles 29. We read verse 16, but there you see in verse 17, it says, they began to sanctify on the first day of the first month. That's just a few days from now if we were looking at this, right? And on the eighth day of the month they came, took them 16 days to do that. Finally, they go in verse 18, they tell King Hezekiah, we're ready. We have cleansed all the house of the Lord, all the altars, everything is clean and ready to go. They have done the job that occurs before the examining. It continues afterwards as well. No, we're not going to get that far today because there's a lot in these chapters, but it continues afterwards as well. But we put the sin out and we have examined ourselves before we come to Passover. And then in verse 19, you see, it says, moreover, all the articles which King He has in his reign has cast aside in his transgression, we've prepared and sanctified, and they are there before the altar of the Lord. Put out the sin, put out the trash, put in the good. Days of unleavened bread, we eat unleavened bread. Put it out, put out the leaven, put in the unleaven. So what God was working with them here, I don't know if they thought of it that way, but I know that he gives these examples to us and everything he expects us to do, he wants us to learn, and we see this pattern. And we need to be reminded of every time we come to Passover, of what it's about, what we do, how we prepare for it, and we see Hezekiah doing things in that way.

Now if we go back, if we keep on going down here, down to verse 18.

Oh, I've already read that, okay. Let's go forward here to chapter, oh, okay. So then they're ready, they're ready, they're ready to do that. They realize that they cannot keep, they're not ready for the Passover that year, that month, so they have to wait till the second month. But I want you to see what they've done. As they did things that the way God said, as you move down through chapter 29 there, you see at the end, they go through and they have all the offerings, all the sacrifices, and they do all this singing to God. And you see this joy that erupts among all of the people there, right? So in verse 28 it says, all the assembly worshiped. Down in the last part of verse 30, they sang praises with gladness. You have joy that's all over Jerusalem at that time.

How do we find joy in our lives? We find joy by doing the things that God has called us to.

Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. When we do the things that God says, joy results.

When we don't, the opposite of joy results. Trouble may be there. We may have constant things as God tries to get our attention, like he did, A has. Just turn back to me. Do things my way.

Look at what you're doing in your life. Is your heart with me or is your heart somewhere else?

And so we see this and we might struggle with ourselves as we think, no, can't be me, can't be me, but sometimes we have to ask God, what is it? What is it that you want me to learn?

Or examine ourselves in comparison to the Word of God? You know, they cleansed the temple.

How does God cleanse us? By the washing of the water of the Word, right? Ephesians 5, 26.

Washed by the cleansing of the water of the Word. God tells us what he wants to do. We know his standard. We know his laws. One thing to know them, another thing to do them. Not always easy to do them. We have this heart in us that lingers on from Romans 8, 7. The carnal heart that's enmity against God that will resist him can only be overcome by the Holy Spirit, but if we have the Holy Spirit, less and less, year by year, we should find that resistance. When God does show us a problem, a fault, an attitude, an area that we may be resisting to him, we should get to the point where it's like, fine, I'm carrying that trash out and I'm replacing it with complete surrender and yielding to you because I know your way is the way to life. I know your way is the way to joy and I trust you with all my heart, soul, and mind. So this joy just erupted in Jerusalem and when they actually get to the point of keeping the days of Unleavened Bread, the joy is so great that they aren't ready to go back and buy their McDonald's hamburger the day it's over. They keep the feast another two weeks. But in 31, we begin to see what God is looking for when he's looking at this perfect heart that he wants you and me to develop. In 31, you know, as they're singing praises of gladness to God, Hezekiah answered and said, well, now that you've consecrated yourself to the Lord, now that you've chosen him, now that you're worshiping him, now that you're following him, and you've committed yourself to him, like you and I have, come near and bring sacrifices and thank offerings into the house, into his house. So the assembly, they did it. They brought in sacrifices and thank offerings and as many as were of a willing heart brought burnt offerings. Oh, a willing heart, a willing heart. So part of a perfect heart would be a willing heart. If God says to do something, and it may be, oh, not even against our will, but can you do this? Can you do that? Would we willingly do it? Might we do it under protest? Wait, we do it and say, well, if I have to do it, I'll do it. They had a willing heart. When you read back where we were in 1 Chronicles 29, when David was asking the people to bring an offering, they did it with a willing heart.

They were ready to do it. Whatever God asked, I will do. That's what he expects of me. That's what he expects of all of us. It's part of a perfect heart. So they had a willing heart, and we see that they had an enormous response to it. Not everyone did it, though, just as many as had a willing heart. So some didn't have a willing heart, but apparently many, many, many did. And so if we go down to the end of the chapter there in verse 36, we see Hezekiah, and he doesn't take credit at all for what he has done. He has simply followed God.

Hezekiah says, And all the people rejoiced that God had prepared the people since the events took place so suddenly.

They heard and they responded.

He didn't do a lot of, Hold on. Let me reason through this. I've got this to do, and I've got this to do. Maybe we need to wait six months on this or wait six months on that. God said it.

We've been told to do it. We just do it.

If we have a perfect heart, we know God. We have a relationship with God, and we do it.

Because He said so, and that's all we need to know. And we see His Word in the Bible, and we follow His Word in the Bible. It's His Word. And if we don't believe that, then we're in the wrong place. And we have some self-examination to do. Every word, He said, we live by. So we see how Judah is responding, and Hezekiah is responding to God's to God's lead. Well, when we move into chapter 30, we find out that they're not going to be able to keep the Passover in the first month. They're not ready. And of course, for Passover, it's so important to God that if you can't keep it on the first Passover, it makes the provision for the second Passover. It should be for a good reason, not just because you didn't feel like coming out of the house that night, but because there's a really good reason you need to take the second Passover. And in this case, they did. And God answered it. Of course, we read that in verse 3. But in verse 5, it says in chapter 30, it says, 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.

In the prescribed manner. Well, what is the prescribed manner?

We know what it was in Old Testament times. They killed the lamb. Well, let's go back and look at Leviticus 23. Let's just see what the prescribed manner was, and we can compare it to this prescribed manner that we have for keeping the Passover today. Let's go to Leviticus 23.

Leviticus 23.

And of course, this is the chapter where all the appointed times of God are listed.

Pick it up in verse 1. God spoke to Moses, saying, verse 2, speak to the children of Israel and say to them, the appointed times, the feast, I'm going to say appointed times, the appointed times of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations. It's God's time. It's God's meeting. It's His appointed time. Convocation means meet together in person, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations. They're God calling us together. These are my appointed times. And then he talks about the Sabbath day. You and I are here today in person. People this morning were in person. We have others who have been there. Others who are listening on the website have been at Sabbath services someplace as well. God wants us to take the time and make the effort. Did you notice how much effort Hezekiah and his team put into cleaning up that house? It wasn't something, you know, I'll get my Dyson cleaner out and spend five minutes sweeping it up. They put a lot of work into it for a lot of time. It takes a lot of work to clean our house up. A lot of self-examination, a lot of tough things that we have to look at. Oh, anyway, he says, you know, the Sabbath is a holy convocation. And then in verse 4, he says, these are the feasts of the Lord, holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at their appointed times. On the 14th of the first month at twilight is the Lord's Passover. Not Moses' Passover, not our Passover, it is God's Passover. So when is the Passover kept? Well, the 14th of the month that evening. We at twilight, same time Jesus Christ gathered together with His disciples and kept the Passover.

We can say the prescribed manner. Let's go back to Exodus 12. Mr. Clore was in Exodus 1249. I'm going to go to Exodus 1248 because part of the prescribed manner, you know, on the Passover is the people who participate in the Passover. Exodus 1248, as God is talking about it, in verse 47 of Exodus 12, he says, all the congregation of Israel shall keep it. In verse 48, he says, when a stranger dwells with you and wants to keep the Passover, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it, and he shall be as a native of the land, for no uncircumcised person shall eat it. And so we have this provision that God says, I want everyone to keep it, but if you have someone who isn't circumcised, they're not to be there. They have to commit to God. They have to take the sign of the covenant. They have to be part of the covenant to participate in the Passover. Now, we know today physical circumcision is not anything.

It doesn't, it's not anything. It doesn't mean the church is against it or anything like that. It just doesn't have the spiritual, doesn't have the significance it did back then. But there is a circumcision that God expects us to, for the Passover, to observe it in the prescribed manner that he says back there. And we find that in Romans 2. Romans 2, and verse 28, we see that we're all, physical circumcision doesn't mean anything anymore in that regard. There is a circumcision that God expects as we keep the Passover this year. In verse 28 of Romans 2, Paul writes this, under inspiration of God, he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly. Ah, where is his heart? Right? The Pharisees, they had a good outward appearance, right? But what did God say? Go and clean the inside up. What's on the inside of you? But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men, but from God. Circumcision of the heart. What's the covenant we make with God today? He calls. We respond. We repent. We are baptized. We have hands laid upon us. He gives us his Holy Spirit. We live in accordance with the Holy Spirit. We reject our prior life and everything that was part of it. And God buries our sins, but going forward, we live according to his word, led by him. So when we come to Passover, understanding the commitment that we made, and recognizing that this is a time for us to analyze and examine what is going on as we come before God and realize the significance of that event when we keep the Passover before God, we don't want to keep it in an unworthy manner, because God says if we do, we're guilty of the blood of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. None of us want that. Our calling is quite serious.

Our life is quite serious. God will give us tremendous joy, as I know most everyone has experienced. I hope everyone has experienced. Even in times of trials, Paul certainly said, count it all joy. Count it all joy when you have these trials. Why? Because you're doing what God said. He's working with you. He's bringing you. He's perfecting you so that you become a complete person that can serve him for eternity. So, if we go back to 2 Chronicles, we have a prescribed manner, which they were looking at back then to keep it the way God said. The same thing you and I are doing right now is we prepare to observe that day in the way that God wanted it observed.

They go out and do that. They sanctify themselves. As we come down to I thought it was the wrong chapter. As we come down to verse 10 is a very interesting thing. Hezekiah says, go to all the cities of Judah, Ephraim and Manasseh. Tell them, come to the Passover. Come and keep those holy days with us.

He expects everyone will. But in verse 10, it says here, those runners that he sent out, they went away as far as Ephraim and Manasseh and Zebulun, but they laughed at them and mocked them.

Wow! Everything that was going on in Jerusalem and when they come, all excited about, here's the Word of God, here's what we need to do. And if we turn to God, if we turn to God, He'll toward us, right? The same thing God tells us, draw near to Him. But then they laughed and they mocked. And sadly, you know, some today would say, well, you know, I don't know that we need to do all that. I don't know that we have to do that. Certainly the world, when we preach the Gospel to the world and what the Word of God is, they're going to laugh, they're going to scorn. But there will be some, sadly, who will also scorn and mock and jeer silently, perhaps, because in their hearts is not to do everything that God wants us to do. They have a double heart, double mind, if you will. And God brings us down to verse 12 here, where we see another aspect of having the perfect heart that God is looking at. In verse 12 of 2 Chronicles 30, it says, the hand of God was on Judah to give them singleness of heart, singleness of heart, to obey the command of the king at the word, at the word of the Lord. Singleness of heart. I'm singularly committed to you. You know, we understand our calling, and we understand what God has called us to. We live our lives, we work, we are in our communities, we, you know, go to school, we do all the things of everyday life.

But God is looking at all our life. How do we live our lives? It's not just a one-day-a-week Christianity. It's a 24-7 Christianity. When people see us and how we operate in our day-to-day lives, how we operate at work, how we handle situations that come up, how we handle stresses, they should look and say, what's different about you? Why do you have that peace and calm in the face of everything that's going on? Why? Why? Why? It's because we're living by God's way. We're living with His Spirit. We understand. We're following God. So all of our lives God gives us, you know, prescribes. The Word of God isn't just about how we keep the holy days. It's about how we live every aspect of our lives. And we need to live by those and, you know, study them, examine, and make sure that the same thing we would do in church is the same thing that we would do and how we would treat people that we work with and encounter with, just like Jesus Christ didn't only work with His disciples. He interfaced with people who mocked Him and jeered Him.

He set quite an example that we can set as well. But singleness of heart. God cites this out. Singleness of heart. Keep your finger there in 2 Chronicles. Let's go forward to Acts, because we see the same concept in the New Testament church.

On the day of Pentecost, God gave His Holy Spirit to the church.

And Peter gave a sermon that God gave Him that day to preach, and 3,000 were added that day. And as God brought people to the church, they lived in a different way going forward than they did before. We see it in verse 46. I won't take all the time to go through all of the verses here. But in verse 46, we have this group of people who has now left their homes. They're living together in one place because they wanted to be with people of like mind. And in verse 46, it says, So continuing daily with one accord, they had the same mind, they were all in the same, they were all in agreement with one another, all believing the same thing.

So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they had a relationship with one another, they enjoyed each other's company.

They ate their food with gladness. There was joy among them. They had decided to displace themselves and put themselves together. But there was that gladness because when we do things God's way, there is gladness. There is joy. That's the way to it. And the New King James says they did that with simplicity of heart. If you have the Old King James, it says they did that with singleness, singleness of heart. They were committed to God, 100% to God.

Now we could take the time. Let me just turn to one verse here later on, James 4 and verse 8.

You know, singleness of heart is that we are committed to God, as Hezekiah was. He wasn't thinking, well, okay, we can kind of do these things, but maybe I can work with the Assyrians, maybe I can work with these Edomites, maybe if we worked with the Philistines and kind of bided our time, no, it was 100% God. So in James 4 verse 8, contrasting singleness of heart is double-hearted, James 4, 8 says, draw near to God, He'll draw near to you. We see that example. This is what we do in the time that we lead up to the Passover and really all our lives, but at this time, specifically, cleanse your hands, you sinners. Get rid of the trash, wash them up, get them clean, cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded, which is the same thing as double-hearted. We turn back to Psalm 12. I'll put my notes here for a moment.

Psalm 12. I'm going to assume I know it from... Okay, give me a minute. Let me look at my notes here. That's not Psalm. So, yeah, Psalm 12. Psalm 12 verse 2. I was looking at the wrong thing. Yeah, okay, Psalm 12 verse 1. Help, David says, help, Lord, for the godly man ceases. Where do I find a godly man? Not acting the way of God anymore. For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men. They speak idly, everyone with his neighbor. Not speaking the things of God, but whatever the world does, handling themselves in that way. They speak idly, everyone with his neighbor with flattering lips and a double heart.

They speak. I'll tell you one thing to your face, but behind the scenes I may be mocking, I may be jeering and thinking, okay, I'm not going to do that, right? This is what happens. Flattering lips.

We... I won't even go there. With flattering lips and a double heart, they speak. God is looking at a perfect heart as we serve him with singleness of heart. Whatever he says, we do. And what we see it in his word, we do it. And we come to the point where we readily do it and take out the trash and get rid of it. So let's go back again to 2 Chronicles.

And see more of what they did here. So we have a perfect heart. We have a willing heart.

We have singleness of heart. If we drop down more in 2 Chronicles 30, we see that as it came to the second Passover, not every single person had gone through the ceremonial purification or were ceremonially as clean as they was in the Old Testament. So theoretically, they wouldn't be able to keep the Passover then, too. But look what Hezekiah does. Verse 18 of 2 Chronicles 30, it says, Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, May the good Lord provide atonement for everyone who prepares his heart to seek the God, the Lord God of his Father, though he isn't perfect, right? Though he isn't clean, according to the purification of the sanctuary.

You know what? Their heart is there. They are part of the covenant. They've got the covenant in them of the Old Testament. And they may not be pure and clean. They are still sinners.

They still are working some things. Come to the Passover anyway. God, they've prepared their hearts. They are working at it. They are working on their hearts to become singleness of hearts. They have that perfect heart that you want us to develop in the course of our lifetime. They're trying. And God responded favorably because He knew just about them, just like He knows about us. He knows what the intent of our heart is. I can fool you. You can fool me.

We can't fool God. He knows what the intent of our heart is. And verse 20 says, God, listen to Hezekiah, and He healed the people. You know, there's physical healing. There's spiritual healing. God will spiritually heal all of us when we turn to Him. We will be His children. He will lead us. He will guide us. He will be our Savior. Jesus Christ is our Savior.

I'm not going to take the time to go back and talk about the bread and wine. You know that, and I don't want anything in the sermon to be indicative that I am minimizing Jesus Christ as part of the Passover. Absolutely not. He is the reason we are all here. He's the reason, the only reason any of us even have a future. So never minimize Him. But also, don't minimize or put away the self-examination that God wants us to have. Because if we are here to please God, if we are here and we believe in Jesus Christ, then what does He have us do? If you love me, do my will. Keep my commandments. Do the things I say. That's how you show me, that you love me and you believe in me. And so we have to do that examination as we show God where our hearts are.

So if we continue on there, you know, we've got all these things that there in verse 21, and you're in 2 Chronicles 30. There's great gladness. There's joy. There's always joy. Remember that. Sometimes people will say, what about the joy? Can we talk more about joy? Yeah, we can talk about joy. You know how you get joy? Do God's will. When we do God's will, if we are all doing God's will, there would be great joy in this congregation, in this Hezekiah congregation. There was great joy such that when they kept the Days of Unleavened Bread, they kept it for another seven days. They were so happy to be there. The atmosphere was so rich, so invigorating, so full of energy, and so full of zeal. The way you and I will be when we do things God's way is when we straddle the world and we say, I don't know if I'm ready to give up that little God. I don't know if I'm ready to give that up and trust in God fully. We've got to get to that point. None of us are there yet today, but that is part of what keeping the Passover and keeping the Days of Unleavened Bread and God's Holy Days year after year is. Little by little, step by step, God will purify us. And year by year, we should understand more of God's plan, and there should be more joy as we keep that, and more anticipation as we enter into those holy days, because we know what God is working and He focuses us on what He wants us to do.

So, as we've talked about the heart, we saw Elijah—or not Elijah—Hezekiah in Ezekiel in Isaiah 38. Look what he did, and this is just part of Hezekiah's life, right? There's a whole other part where he faced Assyria and the complete trust that he had in God that we can learn some examples for as well, because that trust in God continues and builds. He looked at God when God said, Your life is over. And he said, But I've walked with you in truth. I've walked before you in a perfect heart. And God said, You know what, Hezekiah? I'll give you life. I'll give you more life.

Before we were baptized, before we committed to God, we were dead people. God gives us life.

The life we have is because of Jesus Christ. The life we have is with the Spirit that He has in us. So, I want to conclude where I started. Let's go back or go forward to Isaiah 38 again. And when God grants Hezekiah life, He prays a prayer at the end of that chapter. I'm not going to read the whole prayer, but you might go back and look at it later on and see how Hezekiah, how thankful he is. He realizes that he was dead, but it's God who gave him life. And He realizes it's God when He forgives our sins that He is merciful. Let me just pick it up in verse 15 and kind of keep that in mind because this is something we could all say about ourselves. As He prays to God after God gives him life, gives him this miracle of the sundial going back 10 degrees, Hezekiah says, What shall I say? He has both spoken to me and He Himself has done it. I shall walk carefully all my years in the bitterness of my soul. You know, Psalm 51, David makes the statement that my sin is ever before me. He always remembered what kind of a man he was, apart from God's Spirit.

I think we all can kind of look at ourselves and think, you know, I thank God that I'm not who I would have been without His Holy Spirit, that our life is richer and fuller. And sometimes it's good to be mindful of that and thankful to God and that will generate the joy and the eagerness and the zeal to follow Him as well. I shall walk carefully all my years in the bitterness of my soul. O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my Spirit. So you will restore me and make me live. Indeed, it was for my own peace that I had great bitterness. It was difficult to go through those trials. It was difficult to recognize who I am, but as for my peace, because you had my best interest at heart. You wanted me to be part of your family. You wanted me to have eternal life. You want me to be in your kingdom. And we have to go through these things as God purifies us and gets rid of the trash and gets rid of the double heartedness and the double mindedness. So you will restore me and make me live. It was for my own peace that I had great bitterness. But you have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption. You have cast all my sins behind your back. For she all can't thank you. Death can't praise you. Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your truth. The living, the living man, he shall praise you as I do this day. As we approach these spring holy days, let's praise God, but let's do the things the way God said. Let's do it in the prescribed manner, and let's ask God to help us all have a perfect heart as we serve Him.

We now have our final opportunity to sing praises to God this