Joy Grows When Sin Is Removed | Rediscovering Joy - 2 Kings 23:1-23 | Matty Finlay

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Okay, good morning, and once again, welcome to Silverdale. If you and I have not met before, my name is Maddie. I have the privilege of serving as a part of the team here on our Bonnie Oaks campus. And this morning, I have the joy of opening God's word with you. So wherever you're at, whether you're here at the Bonnie Oaks campus, join us online or whatever other venues and campuses, if you would take your Bible and open up to 2 Kings chapter 23 for me. 2 Kings 23. Over the last couple weeks, we have been looking at the life of a king named Josiah and specifically how he led the nation of Judah into one of the greatest spiritual revivals in all of history. We've talked about how the beginning of a revival, the starting place for seeing joy restored in our lives, is by personally seeking God, by having a personal relationship with God. Then last week we saw how Josiah found the word of God that had been neglected in the temple for decades, led the people back to a place of obedience to it. And how the word of God was brought back to the forefront of the nation of Judah. Well, this morning we're going to take a really practical look at what Josiah does next, but before we get there, I want us to take just a moment to slow down for a little bit. You see, every Sunday we walk into rooms just like this. And we open the Word of God, and God speaks to us through His Word every single Sunday. And every Sunday is an opportunity for you and I to be shaped by and molded by and conform to the truth of God's word and what's contained in it. Well, this morning, we're gonna ask some questions about the sin in our lives. Now, here's what I know. As soon as I say that, every one of us begins to squirm in our seats just a little bit. Because many of us, most of us, maybe all of us, are really uncomfortable talking about our sin. However, the problem for most of us is that while we are uncomfortable talking about our sin, most of us have really grown comfortable living in our sin. And we want to walk into rooms like this, and we don't necessarily want to talk about sin, but we're really comfortable living in our sin. And you see, the most dangerous sins aren't always the big ones. They're often the sins that we've stopped fighting against. They're the sins that we've grown comfortable with. Little over a year ago, about 18 months or so ago, I started CrossFit for the very first time, and I swore I'd never do CrossFit and for all the reasons. But my wife looks at me one day and she's like, hey, this new gym's opening up in College Dale, it's called Stackhouse. I want you to go try it for a week and you know, kind of be there for the opening week, and 18 months later I'm still there every day at 5 a.m. and you are more than welcome to join me any day you see fit. However, about seven months into this journey, we're going into a week where it's supposed to be what we call like a max week, and you're supposed to lift or push or pull the most weight you can at that specific exercise. And I remember I've got my barbell, and all of a sudden I'm like, uh-oh. Something just happened. And I spent probably the next couple minutes like trying to pretend like I'm trying to catch my breath, I've got the hands on my knees, but my back is in pieces at this point. And I know in that moment I've done something not good. It takes about two weeks for me to stand up straight, and I say that with all sincerity. Like, gradually over the course of two weeks, I got looser and looser and looser. You know, because I'm a guy, I don't go to a doctor or physical therapist or chiropractor or anything because we know we don't do that, we make the smart decisions. Uh so that's what I do for the next two weeks. I just stuff it up and I've got my back brace on, and I'm putting like icy hut on it, and I'm trying to do all the things to loosen it back up again. I get through about two weeks, two to three weeks, and it starts to loosen up again. I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna go back to the gym and start working out again. And and so I do. So I get back in the gym and I gradually begin to figure out what I can do, what I can't do, what hurts, what doesn't hurt. Or look, I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna do that thing. And then over the next several months, six, seven months, I get back into a routine and I figured out kind of what I can do and can't do, right? Because at least in my mind, that's what I think we're supposed to do. If I'm quite honest, I was afraid of my wife telling me I was a pansy and I just needed to go back to working out, if I just really want to be honest with you. But if something remarkable happened, I'm about seven months into this journey, I'm doing another exercise, and I realized in the midst of this exercise, I'm not doing this right. And the reason I'm not doing this right is because all of my weight from my right leg, because it hurts at the right above my right leg, is shifting onto my left leg. I'm getting down to the bottom of the exercise, and as I come back up again, I'm shifting back over because the pain in my right hip is so bad. So at that point, I'm like seven months in, I'm like, I gotta go see a physical therapist. So go see your physical therapist. Long story short, she tells me what probably happened earlier is that you pull something, strain something, like, well, yeah, I didn't need to pay you to tell me that. I knew that coming in here. So, but what's happened is that your body has compensated for your injury, and those muscles have remained weak while everything else has gone strong. So the point that you're trying to add weight or whatever it is, those muscles cannot carry that weight. So my body had compensated. I had grown comfortable with the pain. I'd figured out how much pain I could get through, and my body had compensated. But there was this moment, right, where the pain was noticed again. It wasn't crippling, it wasn't debilitating, but it was enough for me to notice what was going on. I'd grown comfortable with my injury, I'd grown comfortable with the pain, and I had allowed myself to compensate so I could keep doing what I was doing. Now, why do I tell you that silly story? Because I think that many of us, that's the way we deal with sin in our lives. For many of us, when it comes to the sin in our lives, there is this moment that the pain is crippling. There is this moment that it's debilitating. Maybe you got caught. Maybe he found out, maybe she found out, maybe it all came undone. There is this moment typically, this uh-oh, I've done something bad moment that causes us to stop dead in our tracks. And for a period of time, we commit to not doing it again, to not going to the place, to not going down that road. I'm never gonna do that thing again. There is this season where we commit to doing things differently, and then what typically happens is the pain goes away, the hurt goes away, things seem to go back to normal, and we go right back to the thing that we were doing in the first place. That sin is still there, it didn't go away, but we find ways to accommodate it, we find ways to manage it, to live with it, we find new ways to hide it until there is this moment again where maybe somebody points it out. Maybe the pain becomes too consistent. Maybe there's this moment where it's debilitating again. Or maybe just God himself speaks you in such a way that you decide it's not gonna make a change. Could it be this morning? That we've become so accustomed to the anger outburst that we've begun to believe that it's another. Could it be this morning for those of us here in the room watching live out of the campuses? That the gossip has become so prevalent in our lives that we don't even notice it anymore. Could it be that we've become so used to this sin in our lives that we no longer even choose to fight against it? That we've decided just to live with it. And what Josiah is gonna do is he's gonna show us what we need to do with our sin. So if you're taking notes, I want you to jot this down. This is the first thing on your outline for me. It's this we have to identify our sin. We have to identify our sin. It is not enough, church. Look at me. It's not enough for us to say, I know I'm a sinner. I know I'm a sinner. That is not enough. I know that the phrase name it and claim it has negative connotations because of what it is so closely tied to. But when it comes to our sin, that is exactly what we have to do. We have to name it. We have to identify what our sin is, we have to call it what it is. We gotta stop saying things like I made a mistake. Right? We have to identify our sin, we have to name it, and then we have to claim it as our own. We have to say things like this the way I just talk to my wife is sinful because it's degrading and belittling. We have to say things like cheating on my taxes is sinful because it's stealing. We have to say things like my alcohol consumption is sinful because it's a coping mechanism. We have to name it and claim it. We have to say exactly what it is, and that it is our sin. We don't speak in generalities. Well, you know, the church can so often do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We have to name the sin and claim it as our own. Look how Josiah does this. Second Kings 23, verses 4 through 7. He says this. And the king commanded Hilkai the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the hosts of heaven. And he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel. And he deposed the priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places of the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem, those who also burned incense to Baal to the sun and the moon and the constellations and all the hosts of heavens. And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord outside Jerusalem to the brook Kidron, and he burned it at the brook Kidron, and he beat it to dust, and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. And he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes who were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah. Before anything was destroyed, it was named. How easy would it have been in those four verses to just say, and all of the idols were destroyed? But an important step in removing sin from our lives is to identify it and to name it. So how do we identify sin? We return to the word of God, right? We talked about that last week, and the word of God will reveal to us, it will act like a mirror to us, and it will show us what the sin is in our lives. Let me read two passages to you that do that. Colossians 3, verses 5 through 10 say this. Put to death, kill, destroy, do away with whatever terminology you want to leave, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you. Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these you two once walked when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self which is being renewed in the knowledge after the image of its creator. Then Galatians 5, verses 19 through 21 say this. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warn you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. We have to identify the sin in our lives, we have to name it and claim it. So what does that look like? How do we begin to identify the sin in our lives? How do we begin to figure that out? Here are four questions that I would ask you to ask yourself to help identify the sin that may be prevalent in your life. Here's the first one. It's on the on your outline right there. What do I turn to for comfort? What do I turn to for comfort? What has become a crutch to you? Who has become a crutch to you? What is a coping mechanism for you? Where or what do you turn to before you turn to God to bring you comfort? When you are hurting, where do you turn? What do I turn to for comfort? Here's the next one. What do I fear losing? What do I fear losing? What are you so afraid of losing that you hang on to it so tightly? Your reputation, dollars. What do you lose sleep over when you think about it being taken away? What makes me angry, defensive, or anxious? What makes me angry, defensive, or anxious? What causes those big emotional responses to come out of you? Is it when someone challenges your authority? What can cause your response to be out of proportion to the situation that's taking place? What causes, what makes me angry, defensive, or anxious? And his life. What do I hide from others? What do I hide from other people? What are you doing that you're hoping the person next to you doesn't find out? What are you doing in secret when nobody else is watching you? What would cause you to hope that the ground would open up and swallow you whole if I was to play it on your screen behind me? What are you hiding from other people? Not all too long ago, I found myself asking one of those questions. See, I love getting to teach the Bible. So I love having the opportunity to help people like me know and understand what God's word says and how we apply it to our lives. And I knew from not long after being a follower of Jesus that that was part of the calling that God had on my life. But just a couple of years ago, there had been this subtle shift in my heart. And what I had come to realize is what started out as this calling to honor God and to do the thing that God had told me turned into a desire to get your approval. What started as me leaving on a Sunday morning or Wednesday night, wherever it may be, not caring one bit about what people thought because I knew I was being obedient to what God asked me to do, had turned to me desperately needing and seeking the approval of you. Wanting to hear you say, hey Maddie, that was a great job this Sunday. You did awesome. Wanting to hear you tell me how good I was. Your approval had become an idol in my life, and I had to repent of my sin. I had to name it. I had to claim it. And then Josiah shows us what to do next. We need to jump this down. We have to take action. Number two. We have to take action. Second Kings 23, verses 8 through 15 document all that Josiah did next. But I I want to just look at a couple verses. You look at verse 8, it says this. He brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings from Gebah to Beersheba. And he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the governor of the city, which were on one's left at the gate of the city. Then verses 11 through 12 say this. And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun at the entrance of the house of the Lord by the chamber of Nathan Melech, the chamberlain, which was in the precincts. And he burned the chariots of the sun with fire, and the altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manesseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, he pulled them down and he broke them into pieces, and he cast the dust of them into the brook of Kidron. Josiah took action. He broke down the high places, he defiled the altars, he smashed sacred pillars, he burned bones, he tore down structures built for false gods. He is both ruthless and thorough when it comes to the idolatry in the nation of Judah. There is no negotiation with sin. There is no like, let's put this in a place for later on. He completely destroyed it. He cut off access to it. Can you just picture the scene with me for just a moment? This young king goes into this temple where there are all kinds of idols who have been built to all kinds of different gods by the kings come before him and he tears the place down. He tears it apart. He takes those things out, he smashes them into pieces, he burns them, he takes the dust and throws it in the brook. The smell of smoke would have been smelled all through the city of Judah. The smoke likely could have been seen all across the nation of Judah. And the people would have known exactly what was going on. These things that they had worshipped for decades, King Josiah had just destroyed. There was no negotiation with sin. Generations of compromise were destroyed. Jesus would say it this way in Matthew 5, 29 through 30. He would say, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it's better that you lose one of your members, then your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It's this idea, church, that we cannot play with sin. That we have to humble ourselves and be willing to do whatever it takes to rid ourselves of the sin in our lives. That we have to take action. So what can that look like? What can that look like for you and I? Maybe you delete the apps or block the websites. Maybe you end the relationship or the friendship. Maybe you change the routine that you've been a part of, you delete the number, you throw away the object or you burn the object, you cancel the subscription. I don't know what that looks like in your life, but what I do know, what Josiah is showing us, is that we have to be relentless in taking action against our sin. Because the enemy that we fight against is relentless. Sin is relentless, and we have to take whatever measures we have to take to rid ourselves of sin. Church, we cannot play with sin. It will destroy us, it will take us further than we've ever anticipated and cost us more than we were ever willing to pay. And if I can for just a moment, if I can speak to parents, specifically parents that have children that have screens, phones, tablets, iPads, computers. You know, one of the number one sins that we deal with in church is pornography. Sexual immorality. And offering that begins early in the teenage years when a parent gives a kid access to a screen with little to no accountability. Power to help your children fight sin in their lives. And I'm not just talking about the boys. Our goal as parents is not to make our children happy. Our goal as parents is to set them up as best as we can for them to know God, love God, and tell others about God. And if that means that every evening at nine o'clock or whatever time, that their phones and their tablets and their computers have to come to a central location and they're not happy about it, then so be it. Their walk with Jesus, their resistance against sin is more important than them being happy. We need to come alongside our children to help them fight sin in their lives. Here's the third thing that we see. We have to replace sin. Not only do we have to remove sin, but we also have to replace it with something else. We have to fill the void that was left. We'll talk a little more about this next week, but look at what Josiah does. Skip on down to verses 21 through 23. It says this. For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or the kings of Judah. But in the 18th year of King Josiah, this Passover was kept to the Lord in Jerusalem. Josiah removed sin, he removed the idols, he destroyed the idols, and he replaced them with worship. He replaced them with worship of the one true God. Maybe you have been struggling with lust. And instead of turning to a screen, can you open your Bible and read scripture instead? Maybe you found yourself struggling with anger, and instead of immediately firing off an email or a text, we take time to pray and worship and listen to a worship song. We need to replace the sin and not just leave a vacuum. Listen to me, if Josiah hadn't replaced the idols with worship, the people would have gone back to doing the only thing that they knew. And so will we. We will return to what once filled the void. So we replaced the idols with worship. I remember when this became so real to me. I'd been following Jesus 24 hours. Gave my life to Christ on a Thursday night. And I was at Carson Newman College that Friday night and Saturday typically, we'd hop in a car, we'd drive 11 in, we'd head to Knoxville, and that's where we'd party for the weekend. And I remember sitting in the lobby of my dorm room on that Friday night watching teammate after teammate after teammate after teammate head out to get in a vehicle and head to Knoxville. I remember sitting in that lobby thinking, I can't do this. If this is what following Jesus means, that I'm gonna be all by myself and alone, I can't do this. And within 24 hours of saying, Jesus, I choose to follow you, I was ready to throw in the towel because I hadn't replaced that sin with something else. And then something happened. This guy named Matt, this goofy, shaggy haired guy from Greenville, South Carolina, taps me on the shoulder and he says, Hey, you want to come hang out with us for a while? And that one thing made everything okay again. Because I had replaced what was missing with something else. I had taken the sin, the idol had been gone out of my life, and we replaced it with something. When we remove idols and sin from our lives, if we don't replace it with worship, if we don't replace it with something else, we'll go back to the very thing that we chosen to give up. Finally, here's the last thing that I want you to see. It's this that we have to find community. We have to find community. That was the beauty of that moment when Matt tapped me on the shoulder. Is I went from being isolated and alone. Question is, is this really what I want to do, God, to now being in the midst of Christian community. Won't you notice what Josiah does? Look at 23 verses 1 through 2. It says this. Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. Josiah gathered the people together, and he led the nation into repentance. He doesn't act alone and in isolation. He gathers all of the elders, all of the people, all of the priests, all of the prophets, all of the community, and he brings them into the shared obedience, the shared accountability. When we are fighting sin, when we are seeking to remove sin from our lives, community matters. Who we spend time with matters. The people we allow to speak into our lives, it matters. One of the reasons I tell teenage boys all the time who talk to me about struggling with pornography to tell their mom, because you know what dads often do? I get it, son. I've been there too. Let's pray about it. You know what moms do? Give me the phone. Give me the iPad. Because who we allow to speak into that matters. The community we share that with, it matters. If you're taking notes, shut this down in the bottom of your outline. Sin grows in secrecy. If we are not a part of community, if we are isolated and alone, if we don't invite other people in, sin will grow. Sin grows when we keep ourselves isolated. Sin grows when we keep ourselves alone. Sin grows when we keep it in the dark. We've got to allow other people in. So here's how I want to encourage you this morning. Maybe you've already begun to think through those four questions, and God is convicting you of your sin even now. There's gonna be a moment here in just a few minutes where you can repent, where you can pray a prayer of repentance. Maybe this morning, as uncomfortable as it may be, you need to grab your spouse and you need to say, Hey, I'm sorry. This was sin. And I need to confess it to you. The revival that leads us to the life that God has called us to isn't found in pretending to be something that we're not. The life that God has called us to isn't found in secrecy and in hiding. The revival that God has called us to, the life God has called us to, it begins when we are finally honest enough to let Jesus deal with the things that we've been hiding. We need to find people that we can be honest with. So on your worship guide, right down there near the bottom, there is a QR code. And if you were to scan that QR code this morning, you'll find two links on there. One will be a link that says find a small group that fits you. If you click that link and you fill out that information, one of our small groups team will touch base you this week. We would love to help you get into community. We'd love to help you find like-minded believers that you can do life with, who will encourage you, who will call out sin in our lives. On that link, you'll also find something that says explore celebrate recovery. If you click that link, it'll take you to a page where you can get some information on a discipleship program we have here at Silverdale called Celebrate Recovery. The goal of celebrate recovery is to identify and to help us understand that many of us have hurts in our past. Many of us have wounds in our past that have led us to a place where we have unhealthy habits in our lives. And those unhealthy habits have led to these hang-ups that we need some help in overcoming. And this would be a great place for you to plug in and get connected. CR is a great place for us to begin to wrestle with the how and the why of those habitual sins in our lives. If you find yourself in a place this morning and you're like, Maddie, that all sounds good and well, but I've tried that before. I've tried to get rid of that sin and it never seems to go away, then CR would be a great place for you to plug in. It'd be a great community for you to be a part of. So here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna pray for us. And as I pray for us, here's what I would encourage you. Would you begin to think through those four questions? Would you begin to allow the Lord to identify sin in your life? Let's pray together. Father, thank you so much for the truth of your word. God, we are grateful for the way you're moving and working here in this place. God, we are grateful for the way that you are using your word to mold us and shape us. We want to be a people who are obedient to the truth of your word, who hear it, who understand it, and who apply it to our lives.