R1321 When God’s People Are Faithful

We all could use some encouragement, and we will find it together today with Dr. Don Wilton on this edition of The Encouraging Word. Today's message is When God's People Are Faithful, and as we open God's Word to you, we're open to connect with you on our website right now at www.tewonline.org. Much buzz about the prayer for your spouse at www.tewonline.org. Now, Dr. Don Wilton. Who are you?

Where are you? What is God saying to your heart today? Do you know that he loves you very, very much indeed? And I'm grateful to the Lord today for this opportunity of being able to share together with God's people everywhere. I'm going to ask you to open your Bibles this morning to 2 Chronicles chapter 28.

So I want to give you a few minutes to be able to find that in the Bible in the Old Testament. We're going to be in 2 Chronicles and chapter 28 and chapter 29. I'm going to say this time without number because I don't want us to stop. I cannot even begin to describe to you the things that the Lord has done in my own heart. He really has blessed my life. And I don't want to stop. I don't want to stop being blessed. I don't want to stop praying and seeking his face.

I don't want to stop fasting, not every day, but from time to time. I want to be a person that lives in the zone of God's goodness. I want my life to really count and I'm seeing that happen.

And so we're in the series now which I've entitled Following Hard After God. Because we've made a decision not to go back to Egypt. We're not going backwards. You know, so many times this week as I spoke to inmates in prisons and as we ministered to them, you think of how many people who fall on hard times and they commit crimes, all the things that go on in life and they encounter the Lord. God does something. The issue is now are we going to go back? One of the great tragedies in our world today is the number of people, if you talk about prisons, the number of people who go to prison get released and then come back to prison again.

I want you to just think about that. One of the gods at Rikers Island told me that just the day before, a man was released after being incarcerated for many, many years. And on his way out of the prison, they found contraband on him. And they just turned around, took him back in. I said, well, how long is he going back in? He said at least five years because it's a major offense.

He's already committed a major offense against his parole. I want you to just think about that for a minute. And there are so many people. This issue of our faithfulness is very important because when God speaks to us, when God does something, he doesn't just take his hands off us. He carries us. He indwells us. He gives to us the inner resources. He protects us. He's mighty.

He's our protector. He's a wonderful God. And if God be for you, who can be against you? And I'm speaking to so many people today who are just faithful. And I want to speak to you today about when God's people are faithful. The Lord has impressed on me to just share with you from my heart. But I want to come out of a passage of scripture because in chapter 28 and chapter 29 in the Book of Chronicles, we mentioned this several times during our prayer and fasting, but I haven't spoken or unpacked this passage at all.

Let me just tell you briefly. They had a king. His name was Ahaz. And Ahaz was a king who did everything he could to defy the name of God. He destroyed the temple. He worshiped pagan gods. He desecrated the name of the Lord. And finally he died. And I'm going to show you something that happened with Ahaz.

Do you know that when people, leaders do that, there's going to come a time when they're going to die and they will never be counted in the court of the kings. That's what happened to Ahaz. And God began to stir in the hearts of the people and he raised up Hezekiah. And Hezekiah was a remarkable man. The Bible says he was a man who pursued the heart of God. I don't believe for one second he was a perfect man.

How could he be? All of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But he was a man who was bent on being faithful to the Lord and he rallied the people and God spoke to him and the leaders began to rally and the leaders rallied other leaders and they came back to the church into the temple and they began to seek the face of God and they said we will bow down and we will worship him. And they began to bring their gifts and they began to honor the Lord and they were just faithful and God honored them. That's what I want to show you today. So watch this very quickly, just a few verses if I may because I want the Bible to say this, not done.

So let's start, where can we start, okay? Let's go to verse 24 of chapter 28. Everybody look at verse 24 of chapter 28. And Ahaz gathered together vessels of the house of God and cut in pieces the vessels of the house of God and he shut up the doors of the house of God.

There is a massive movement in America today to shut up the doors of the house of God. And he made himself altars of every corner of Jerusalem. In every city of Judah he made high places to make offerings to other gods. Provoking to anger the Lord the God of his fathers. Now the rest of his acts and all of his ways from first to last they're written in the book of King of Judah and Israel and Ahaz died. And they buried him in the city in Jerusalem for they did not bring him into the tombs of the kings of Israel. God will remove faithless people. And Hezekiah his son reigned in his place and he began to reign when he was 25.

He reigned 29 years, his mother's name was Abijah the daughter of Zachariah and he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that his father David had done. Now there's a lot more. I will fill in the gaps if that's all right as we begin to move through this passage. I want to speak to you about when God's people are faithful.

And as your pastor today I want to thank you for being faithful. You know one of the things that we did in Manhattan was we went to the 9-11 memorial. I don't know if you've had an opportunity to do that. It is extremely moving. You know they've even got pictures of the people falling out of the Twin Towers.

They've got one section in there where I'm telling you, you stand there and you'll just want to cry. But how quickly we forget. How quickly we forget. And how quickly we stop going to church and how quickly we turn our backs upon the Lord.

How quickly. You know I look at us as a people. I'm so thankful to the Lord for people who are faithful. And you are a faithful people.

And I love you very dearly today. We together. This is about us. It's about the power of one. It has so many tributaries and arteries.

It's got so many feelers out there. And what happened right here in the Old Testament with these people was they too found themselves in untoward situations. They too experienced great concern. They too had families. They too had loved ones.

They prayed for their sons and their daughters. They too lost their jobs no doubt. They too didn't have enough to eat. They too were concerned about the enemy amassing forces on their borders.

They too were concerned about their diagnosis with the diseases that they faced in their day and age. And God did something and visited upon them. And they chose faithfulness. They said Lord we're going to be faithful.

And I want to just show you some things that happened here. Because when God's people are faithful. Number one.

Number one. They understand. They understand. They understand everything about this world from God's perspective. Faithful people who have sought the face of God are given one of the most precious gifts that you can possibly imagine. And that is a spiritual perceptiveness. A spiritual understanding whereby you and I in the context of our own circumstances are going to be able to look at ourselves and one another and our world through the eyes of God.

That's what happened to these people that came and followed after Hezekiah and did what God told them to do. Faithfulness gives to parents who are battling with a son or a daughter a spiritual perspective on what to do and how to do it. Faithfulness to God gives to our leaders a spiritual perspective about how to tackle life's problems. Faithfulness to the Lord gives to us an inner dwelling of the power and presence of the Spirit of God. It is a spiritual thing. That's what I love being around so many of you today because when I'm around you, I can sense that there is something far greater than any single person can describe.

It's a depth of spiritual perspective and awareness that can only come from the Lord Himself. When God's people are faithful, they understand. Number two, they follow.

That's what happened here. By the way, it's not about Hezekiah. But when God's people are faithful, they follow spiritual leadership. And right throughout, if you go back in the Bible and you begin in Genesis and you follow all of these great men and women of faith and you go throughout all the ages, God has always placed around us in our classrooms, in our highways and in our byways, in our churches and in our roadways, people of great spiritual leadership and faithful people who are obedient to the Lord.

They know the difference. And that's what happened here. These people rallied together around Hezekiah and around the growing echelons, these concentric circles of spiritual leadership that began to form and evolve out of all that God was saying. And they gathered and they made a difference.

That's what happened to Nehemiah. God spoke to Nehemiah. He rallied the tribes and the people and he got them together and everybody began to listen to everybody as God began to speak to the hearts of those that he spoke to. And God brought about a great work and the walls were rebuilt and the gates were repaired. When God's people are faithful, they understand and they follow. I mean, that's pretty clear here in the first five verses of chapter 29, Hezekiah rallied the people and he said, God has spoken and we must do.

And they did. In America today, we need to be very careful who we're listening to and who we're following. We need to be very careful who we're listening to. For the voices are many.

But the leaders are few. Well, they understood and they follow, but when God's people are faithful, they renew. I love verse five of chapter 29 because verse five said, and he said to them, hear me, Levites, now consecrate yourselves and consecrate the house of the Lord.

They renewed their covenant. They came to the point at which they were willing to consecrate. That little word consecrate literally means to offer yourself up completely to God. It's actually a beautiful phrase. The Episcopalian church gets it right when they talk about consecrating bishops.

I love that phrase. It's a group of people coming together around a person as that person is given up completely to the Lord. And what happened here in Hezekiah's time in amidst all of these battles and struggles that they were going through. They came to the point in light of their faithfulness, where they were willing to renew their covenant before God.

That's what happened to Nehemiah. God did a great work and the people came together and they renewed their covenant. And it's a twofold covenant.

First of all, it begins with themselves. By the way, have you ever thought about the fact that a church like this is made up of every person individually? That's the body of Christ. Can you imagine if every person who belongs to the church of the living God lives out in precept and in practice a consecrated life of renewal before God?

What a challenge. You're listening to Dr. Don Wilton here on The Encouraging Word. Maybe you'd like to hear more of this broadcast. You can discover it on our website at www.tewonline.org. Each of these messages, both in video and audio form, are available at what we call On Demand. That's on our website at www.tewonline.org. And while you're there, be sure and sign up for the daily email from Dr. Don. A powerful insight to God's Word.

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All of it for free at www.tewonline.org. There was a renewal that took place here in light of their faithfulness. They renewed their own covenant before God and then they made the same act of consecration toward the house of God. This place, this gathering. I'm here to tell you, folks, the church is critical in God's scheme of his covenant of faithfulness. The church is not an aftermath. It's not an afterthought.

It's not something that you do when you feel like it. It's something that you are a part of because it is ordained and consecrated of the Lord. And it is to the church that Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I want to be a faithful man renewed in my covenant before God. Working out my faithfulness through the church that God has given to me.

And I congratulate you today. It is important that you invite your friends to come to church. Because word has it today that the church is no longer necessary.

Not according to what Jesus had to say. You need to not only put your roots down and belong to a local Bible believing church, but you need to roll up your sleeve in an act of faithfulness before God. Because you are a person who understands from God's perspective. You are a person who follows the Lord's leadership from God's perspective. And you are the one who has been willing to renew your covenant before God as you renew your covenant of consecration concerning the house of the living God. Oh, they understood, they followed, they renewed. The fourth thing that happens when people are faithful is that they bring. They bring. I love this. I tell you there's a verse there in verse 16 of chapter 29 that caught my attention.

This is how it reads. The priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it. And they brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the Lord into the court of the house of the Lord. And they took it and they carried it to the Brook Kidron. Now you'd be interested to know that this Brook Kidron is of singular significance.

It lies just between the Mount of Olives and the temple mound on the outskirts of Jerusalem. And flowing down from the Kidron, the valley of the Kidron, you end up in a place called hell. And what happened here literally was that these spiritual leaders understood that when you are faithful to God and you're willing to consecrate and you renew your covenant before him, that God will begin to impress upon you that you not only need to bring into the house of God, but you need to bring out that which ought not to be there.

Some of you smile when I say this, and I say it with a lot of love. Folks, do you realize how many fighting churches there are in America? They are destroying themselves. They fight over the color of carpets, they fight over which flowers, they fight over who does this, who sings that, who stands up, who sits down. They're fighting, jostling for position, and the devil is sitting there licking his chops.

Do you know why? Because one of the prime institutions instituted by God is disintegrating in America. And what happens when people are faithful? I thank you today for your faithfulness.

I just want to thank you today. We're just beginning. And we will not go back to Egypt. The reason why America is in such trouble is not in the least of which the disintegrated church of the living God. That's why Christians are so silent. That's why nobody's standing up for righteousness and for morality. Nobody's willing to stand upon the word of God. Nobody's willing to say, Thus saith the Lord.

Because people are no longer being faithful to the Lord. I want to thank you for being faithful. They understood and they followed, they renewed, they brought. Verse 25, when people are faithful, when God's people are faithful, they bow down and worship Him. Look at verse 28. I love verse 28. The whole assembly worshiped, and the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded.

And all this continued until the burnt offering was finished. You know one of the things I love about our church? The way in which God allows us to worship. I'm telling you, number six, when God's people are faithful, they rejoice. They rejoice. And Hezekiah, look at verse 36. And Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced because God had provided for the people. Then Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced because God had provided for the people.

And it all came about suddenly. God can turn a sinking ship around on a dime when God's people are faithful. When God's people honor Him, they rejoiced. When you are faithful to the Lord, you're going to rejoice in your family. You're going to rejoice in your sickness. You're going to rejoice in your hardship. You're going to rejoice in your challenges, your struggles. You're going to rejoice in your joy. You're going to have somewhere meaningful to put it. When God's people are faithful, there's joy, there's just joy. Nothing but joy.

Everywhere I go, I meet people, there's nothing but joy. Somebody told me one time, you cannot do it. You cannot get a congregation. You cannot get hundreds and thousands of people together, united together, rejoicing together, serving together, giving together, going together.

You cannot do it. But when people are faithful to the Lord Jesus, God does it. God does it.

We don't do it. God does it. It's a gift from God. I pronounce the gift of joy upon you today.

This is the power of one. And that's why I am going to ask you to do whatever it is God tells you to do, to serve Him, to love Him, to honor Him. I'm going to ask you to do that. I'm going to ask you to lay your life down before Him. That's the challenge from our pastor, and as many are responding in our worship center, I pray that you would open your heart to what Dr. Don wants to share as he steps into the studio next. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ? Why don't you pray this prayer with me right now? Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner, and I know that Jesus died for me on the cross. Today, I repent of my sin, and by faith, I receive you into my heart. In Jesus' name, my friend, I welcome you today into the family of God.

This is exciting news. If you just prayed with Dr. Wilton to give your life to Jesus Christ or rededicate your life, oh, how we'd love to celebrate with you and put some free resources Dr. Don Wilton wants you to have in your hands. Call us at 866-899-9673 and tell us about the decision. Did you restart your life? Is it a recommitment?

Or did you give your life to Jesus for the very first time? Either way, we have these resources to put in your hands if you'll call 866-899-9673. And we're connecting online as well at www.tewonline.org.

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