his word. Samuel, in other words, was a man of the book, and he went around the nation teaching the word of God. He was what we would call today that very much despising an itinerant preacher or teacher. They're out of season just now. We came then to David, who was a man after God, sorry, Saul, who Always disobeyed God, or if he obeyed, it was by chance, it was never voluntarily. He was a man who had no heart for the word of God at all. Not the slightest. A man who followed his own instincts, an emotional man. At one time he's sobbing. Is it thee, my son David, I have sinned and played the fool and all the rest of it. And the next time he's trying to murder him. That's sort of an individual. Up and down, yo-yoing, seesawing, all over the place. but no constancy in obedience to the Word of God. Forty years he has tested, found wanting for that very reason, because you have not obeyed in the matter of the Amalekites, because you have not obeyed, God is going to take you off the throne, and he is going to put on the throne a man who will obey his voice. There you have it. There you have it. Prosperity in obedience. torn from the throne, disgraced and dishonored, his body chopped in pieces and nailed to the walls of Bethshan in disgrace and contempt. I will look out for a man who will obey my voice. And he put David on the throne, despite one or two awesome slips, some awful tumbles on David's part, over and above what was Human weakness. David was a man who longed after the word of God, the house of God, the things of God. Why, he said, I'd rather spend one day in the courts of the Lord than a thousand. I'd rather spend one day than a thousand years anywhere else. You can work out that proportion for yourself. Oh, how I love thy law. And so on. David was a man who always longed after obedience to the word of God. In the times that he tumbled, the times that he stumbled, the times that he violated the word of God, he agonized over it and said that he was drying up like a piece of old crockery, that his pillow was wet with his tears, that his bones were sticking out through his skin in anguish day and night, crying out of his heart, against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight. a man who submitted himself to the truth of God at every turn. Now David set a pattern, and that's what I want to emphasize at this point, because there were three other revivals, and only three. There was one partial, one under Joash, but that was more Jehoiadah's revival than Joash's, more to that in a moment. But there were three great revivals in, among the people of Israel, one of the two of them in Judah the southern kingdom there were no revivals in the northern kingdom and there was not one single good king in the whole of the history of the northern kingdom they went wrong right from the very beginning they set up false places of gathering they felt it set up false gods and Jeroboam set the pattern and again and again we read he did evil in the sight of the Lord as did his father Jeroboam. For as David set up a pattern of obedience, and again and again we're going to read in all of the revivals, that under Hezekiah, that under Josiah, and that under Ezra and Nehemiah, we're going to read words like these on every single occasion. He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, as did his father David. Why go back to David? Why not to Hezekiah? In Ezra's case, why not to Josiah? No. He goes back to the pattern, and he says they did this, that, and the other things in the house of the Lord. They set the Levites and the singers, and they brought in the tithes, and they offered the burnt offerings, and they kept the Passover according to that which was practiced by his father David. It was a pattern that was set up. Oh, my brethren, could I plead of you? Could I implore of you? Set your hearts to setting up biblical patterns that will form part of the texture, the warp and the woof, the weave of the thinking and the practicing and the teaching of the assemblies and congregations of which you form a part. We can do this, you know, or we can set up a pattern of who cares. If it works, let's do it, whether it's in the Word of God or not. If it gets people, if it gets results, if it makes everybody happy, Is this what we're striving for? Or are we striving to carry out what from the word of God? One of these kings rent his garments when they brought him the Bible. The Bible had been lost. And I know I'm anticipating, but I'm doing so with a purpose. He rent his clothes and he said, there is judgment upon us because we have not been careful to fulfill all that is written in this book of the law of the Lord. We have not been careful to fulfill all that is written. He didn't say we've missed out on something. He said we should keep it all. The whole thing should be given total fulfillment. And we have not been careful to give fulfillment for all of it. And I just hope that those of you who are shepherds and elders and therefore who ought to be the teachers of your local assembly, I just hope that it is your objective to set patterns in those assemblies and in your home that other homes would be patterned after, as David his father did. There are links. None of these, not one of these revivals took place by accident. There are links that we're going to see as we go down, and it forms a very interesting, even enthralling reading to me. Now at this moment we come to the revival under Hezekiah. Remember, each revival so far Joshua, Samuel, and carried on by David, and now Hezekiah. Chapter twenty-nine of the Second Chronicles, Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old. A young man, but a serious young man. You know, I think it's about time that we could stop playing with the things of God. I wonder how many of you young men in your early twenties have already seriously lined up your sights on the kind of spiritual life you really want. What kind of goals have you set for yourself? Oh, well, you know, I'm not even through college yet. Well, what are you aiming at in your study through college? Well, you know, you don't aim at anything for a while yet. I'm thinking about this, that, or the other. You know, I think sometimes we deceive ourselves. And we copy the thought patterns of the world instead of the thought patterns of the Word of God. A young man in his early twenties is at the very time when he ought to be on his knees setting spiritual patterns that will govern the rest of his life. Oh, I'll do that later. Don't you fool yourself. If you're going to be a godly old man, you'll have to start by being a godly young man. You'll not switch it on when you become forty or fifty or sixty or seventy. You are now laying the foundations. You are now outlining the pattern of the kind of person you will be for the rest of your life, apart from the mercy of God, in somehow breaking you down and then breaking you up and remolding you. But why? Why? God wants young men, young women, God wants our lives at their best. And if there's one thing above all others, that I am thankful and grateful to God for. It is, one, that I was saved early in life, and two, that I was led very early in my Christian life, thanks to very godly men who were my tutors in the things of the Lord. I was led to submit my life to the Lord very early in my Christian experience. And I had my twenty-first birthday in Central Africa after having spent six months in Lisbon studying Portuguese. And I am so glad that I was able to give the very best of my life to God. Don't play around like a fool just because you happen to be young and say, I've got lots of time. You might, you might not. But I hope that some here will start thinking that it is never time to be frivolous about our lives, to be unthinking. But however young, we're going to find Josiah much younger. But God wants us early in life to put those lives in his hands, clean and unmarred with the best years of our lives for language learning, for energetic work for the Lord, for mapping out our life in relation to life partners, the kind of homes we're going to have. the aims and goals of everything we do, the kind of business we're going to invest our lives in, the kind of professional life, or whether we're going to invest it in either of them or in something else, all of these things can be done if, not only if, we start out right. And this young man at twenty-five years of age, he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. Now David wasn't his father. He was his ancestor. Ten successive kings had ruled in Judah from David to Hezekiah. And not one had brought revival. This man's father, Ahaz or Ahaz, whatever you want to call him, it says about him, he was twenty years old when he began to reign in chapter twenty-eight. He reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. He did not stop which was right in the sight of the Lord, like David his father. You see the test? You see the pattern? That man set a pattern. Dear old David, but he began young too, you remember. And he did not stop which was right in the sight of the Lord, like David his father. He walked in all the ways of the kings of Israel in the north. He made also molten images for Baalim, that is the plural of the word Baal. Moreover, he burnt incense in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that is, in the Valley of Hinnom, from which we get our word Gehenna, because of those stinking fires, where they burned their children in the fire. And this man gave living sacrifices, burnt the children of his own body, alive on altars in the Valley of Hinnom to the God Moloch. That's the kind of place God's people get themselves. Oh, we'd never think of doing that. Oh, I wonder if we all have a completely clear conscience about the things we may have sacrificed our children to. Of course, we didn't take them down into the valley of the Hinnom and tie them up and put them on an altar and set fire to it and burn them to placate the god Moloch. We didn't do it that way. But perhaps we urged them and pushed them to invest their lives. in something just as savage and as pagan as the altars of Moloch in the Valley of Hinnom. But I hope we've never done that. I hope we've never sacrificed our families in the sense of devoting ourselves so much to materialism and the things of the world and neglecting the assembling of ourselves together with the Lord's people that our children have come to see that the important thing is to get a degree and get on in the world. And if you can attend some meetings well and good, but if you can't, too bad. Sometimes you have to give some of these things up. That's sacrificing your children to mullah, alive. And then we wonder sometimes what was wrong. Though I know that parents cannot make spiritual decisions for their children, but at least they can set targets and goals and patterns for their own lives that will either consciously or unconsciously or even subconsciously influence their children to want to live the same kind of life. This man didn't care. And so his sons were burned, some of them anyway, in the valley of Hinnom. And he built images of Baal, and he offered his children in the fire, according after the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. He sacrificed also in burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree. The high places were the monks, where they had all those evil and filthy phallic symbols, the worship of lust, those hideous pillars. They were put in groves, circular groves of trees on the hills. This is why the scripture asks a rhetorical question. It's not I will or I shall lift up my eyes to the hills, but shall I? Shall I lift up my eyes to those hills? From whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord. And those high places were evil places, where they offered sacrifices to demons and to the gods of lust and filth. And that's where this man led his people. Wherefore the Lord his God delivered him into the hands of the king of Syria, and they smoked him and carried away a great multitude. and he ended in disaster. Now that man had this son, Hezekiah. He did not walk in the ways of his father. He walked in the ways of David, a totally different pattern. What sort of pattern are we setting up? Now look at Hezekiah. He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. He, in the first year of his reign, twenty-five years of age, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. Now go back, if you will, to chapter twenty-eight, verse twenty-four. And Ahab gathered together, this was his father, the vessels of the house of the Lord, the things that should have been used for the glory of God. And he cut in pieces the vessels of the house of God. And he shut up the doors of the house of the Lord. And he made him altars in every corner of Jerusalem. Now God had prohibited the making of altars anywhere except in the holy place in the temple. And he built these in every corner of Jerusalem, to the false gods, of course. And in every several or individual city of Judah, he made high places, these mines, to burn incense, incense unto other gods and provoke the anger of the Lord God of his fathers. He died and was buried. And his son comes along and says the first thing he did was he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Now he's not talking about dedicating a chapel or a gospel hall. Those are not the house of God. This is not the house of God. And I don't think we should call places like this the house of God. Whose house are ye? The house of God, we're told, in First Timothy chapter three, is the church of the living God. It's the people. The building should never be called the church. The church meets in the building. And the church is the house or household of God. And this is extremely important to him. On this rock, I will build my church. Not I shall, but I am determined. It is my will. It is my purpose to build my church. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Christ loved the church, gave himself for it. I know that many people today seem to downgrade the importance of collective worship, the local church. Anything that is as precious as the church is to God should never be less precious to you. If it is, then you are not thinking in line with God's thinking. He gave Himself for that church. And that is the center of His testimony and witness. And I'm not talking about any particular branch or section of it. I don't want to get into that. But God here has a people for Himself called out from the nations. And God loves that people. They are the Lord's people. A lovely title for them. That church is his body. That church is his bride. There's no conflict there. It doesn't mean two separate things because a man's bride is his body. They too shall be one flesh. And this has brought out very clearly in Ephesians. That is very precious to God. And God wants us, you and me. He wants us to devote ourselves to the building up of that church. to the establishing of it. The idea of independent, freelance, freewheeling Christians. I don't want to associate myself with anybody. I just want to live for God. In view of what the New Testament teaches as to the importance of the local church, I do not believe you can live for God, denying the importance of the church. Because God has a great pleasure in that. And that is what he's doing these days. He's not merely trying to save individuals. He is trying and he is working on and will perform it, the forming of the church in which he lives and dwells. It is a holy temple, a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. We are living stones built up into an habitation of God through the Spirit. And this is what the church is as seen by God. This man had this very dear and near to his heart. And all the time his father had closed the doors, had cut up the gold and silver vessels, and had bought off the Assyrians and the Assyrians and others with them trying to find a way of being prosperous. And all the time he was disobeying God and cutting out the very foundations of spiritual prosperity. So he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. That was a good step for number one. He repaired them. We read that not only here, but later on, even in the days of Athaliah, her sons broke down. They broke down the house of the Lord, and they took the beautiful things out of it, and the doors, and many bits of it, to build a temple for Baal right in Jerusalem. That's how far they got away. Instead of building that which God wanted built, they were busy building other things. that God wasn't at all interested in, and which in many instances were diametrically opposed to his heart's desires. This man had his compass really adjusted, didn't he? He knew what God wanted, and he started that that which was near to God's heart, which is God's house, and he opened the doors, he repaired them, he brought in the priests, connected with worship, and the Levites, connected with ministry and also with teaching. He gathered them together into the East Street. Into the East Street. There was a gathering together. You see, this kind of work, this kind of pattern, this kind of ministry will have a gathering together effect on the people of God. It will always be constructive to the things that are of God. We'll come to what he did to some of the other things in a moment or two. And then he says to all of these, the priests, the Levites, sanctify now yourselves, sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, carry forth the filthiness, the rubbish out of the holy place. What? Have they allowed rubbish to accumulate in that sacred place called the Sanctuary, the place where the Shakina glory rested? between the chariot bin on the ark of the covenants. Had it got to that state, well, that's what the Bible says. We read in Josiah's day, which was only three generations ahead, that in Josiah's day, they had to spend weeks carrying out rubble, not just rubbish, but rubble. Due to the depredations of the previous two kings, the one between Hezekiah and Josiah, there were two Hezekiah's son and his grandson, who were the worst kings, probably, that the Southern Kingdom had? And they had allowed worse than rubbish. The whole place had fallen into disrepair, and it was a mass of rubble. And they were carrying this out and cleaning the place up when suddenly they rediscovered the Scriptures. The Word of God had been lost. That's a sad one. But we've come to that too in turn. Sanctify yourselves. The word sanctify has nothing whatever to do with sanctimoniousness. The word sanctity and to sanctify speaks of a separation to God and from all that is displeasing to God. Everything that is defiling, everything that will hinder my study of His Word, my communion with Him, my communion with other Christians. This is getting a bit uncomfortable, isn't it? Beginning to cut a little bit close to the bone. But you know that's what the scriptures are for. The scriptures are intended to judge me, to cut me down sides, to open me up, sharper than any two-edged sword, separating even between soul and spirit, that which is merely animal in me, and that which is spiritual, the emotional from the truly spiritual. They're not always tied together. It is that which cuts in all the joints. in the barrel, goes right to the very core of things in my life and judges me. This word is a mirror which shows me myself as I really am before God. And showing me what I am before God, it judges me and it brings me to cry out like this man. Woe is us. Judgment is upon us. Josiah said the same kind of thing. And they offered a sin offering for it. It was repentance. There was a return to God because the word had judged him. Remember once meeting an old, old lady in the city of Winnipeg, and she, in the midst of conversation, she said that back when she was just a girl, a young woman, one of the older generation of the Loazzo brothers, that is two generations back from the present, Haley Loazzo, who is running the business, the father of Daniel Loazzo. and that generation, who was a little peppery man used to come around ministering the Word of God in those days and thinking she was paying him a nice compliment one way or another. She said when she was going out through the door, when, yes, she was going out through the door, you know, Mr. Loazzo, every time you speak from the Word of God, you make me feel about that size. He said, quite big enough, sister, quite big enough. And isn't it true? That which inflates me is surely not the work of the Spirit of God. But that which calls for a tearing of the garment, signs of repentance, some ashes on my head, some tears in my cheeks. Daniel, in that marvelous ninth chapter, turning to God, we have sinned. He hadn't, of course, not in the things that he's talking about, but he identifies himself, associates himself, with the confession that the nation should be making to get God's hand in judgment lifted from him. How did he discover this in the Scriptures, in the Word? And it was the Word and obedience to the Word that drove into prayer, and not the other way around. And so this man had a heart for these things. The Scriptures, they cut into him. Sanctify now yourselves. Get yourselves cleaned up. Some of these men didn't even know their genealogies. Some of them later on we discover had married pagan wives and were disqualified from the work until this mess was cleaned up. Some of them had been involved in the worship of these other idols and the killing of sacrifices for them and so on. He said, sanctify yourselves. Clean up the mess. Get yourselves right, not by what people say, but what this book says. following not the standards of your society, but the standards of this Word of God. Sanctify yourselves. And then sanctify this house. If there is individual tidying up, there will be collective tidying up. For those who have started to feel the Word of God touching their hearts will begin to pray in the local church. And God will influence through them other lives. And before you know where you are, there will be a buildup of concerns Don't argue, don't fight, don't quarrel, don't divide. But influence people to come under the power of this word that will bring personal, personal sanctification, cleaning up of the life, setting a part of that life for God instead of for the world. And as it comes into the individual lives, it will move into the congregational society, into the local church. Not the other way round, because the sum is only equal to the whole is only equal to the sum of all its parts, isn't it? We somehow feel that we can gather together a bunch of unspiritual, materialistic, money-grubbing, and sometimes even defiled Christians, dust off their Bibles and their believers' hymn books on a Sunday morning, go into a certain building and make a spiritual assembly. You can't do that. A spiritual assembly is a gathering of spiritual individuals. And an assembly will only be sanctified and what it ought to be when the individuals in it are of that quality and that character too. You cannot make a spiritual assembly out of unspiritual people. And then he says, carry forth the filthiness, the rubbish out of the holy place. If there are things there that shouldn't be there, get rid of them. Now I imagine that some of this filthiness looked alright to some of the people of God at that time. Maybe they had the odd little image in there because we read of them in this particular, not in this specific period, but in this broad period in other parts. We read of them actually carrying on sacrifices to these gods inside the temple precinct. So they must have had images and altars right in there and store houses for these sacrifices. Some of these probably were, if they were dug up today, you'd have them in the National Geographic and all sorts of other archaeological magazines as wonderful works of art. Very desirable things that people are going to offer a million and a quarter dollars for in an auction before you know where you are, somewhere in New York City. God said they're abominations. It wasn't what men thought of them. It was what God thought of them. Men might think of them as wonderful works of art. Oh, look what we've done. We've really made this place zing. God said, you have defiled it. And anything which is contrary to the word of God has no place in the assembly of God. None if it is contrary to the word of God. So he said, get it out. For our fathers have trespassed us. and have done that which is evil in the eyes of the Lord God, and have forsaken him and turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord, and turned their backs. Turned their backs. Also they have shut up the doors of the porch. They put out the lamps. They have not burned incense nor offered burnt offerings in the holy place of the God of Israel. Wherefore, because of this, the wrath of the Lord is upon Judah and Jerusalem, and he has delivered them to trouble, to astonishment and to hissing, as you see with your eyes, though your fathers have fallen by the sword and so on, they were in a state of decline, physical, administrative, national, social decline, because they were in a state of spiritual decline. And assemblies get into a condition of decline. And I'm sure that there is not one of us who would be brave enough to say today, that the assembly to which we belong, the Christian congregation or gathering, whatever you want to call it, to which we normally belong, that it doesn't need reviving and restoration. I don't believe one of us would be brave enough to say that. And don't we long to see this decline halted? Don't we long to see revival and renewal and restoration? Now, a few years back, one of our magazines voiced this concern, and I'm sure that most of you here read the articles. They continued for quite a while, indeed once in a while, the topic surfaces, and there have been all sorts of gatherings about this. A call to renewal, a call to revival. Nobody could agree with that exercise and that concern any more than I. And I'm sure that you feel the same. for people to write in ideas that might bring about revival and renewal and restoration among the assemblies. And I read quite a few of these. I may have missed the odd one, but I read quite a few of the answers and letters that came in. But you know, the thing that astonished me was that while all sorts of hints were given, all sorts of suggestions were made, we need brighter services. We need to break away from the crusty pattern that we're in, over which all of their suggestions could very well have been true. We need more qualified elders. We need to have a broader attitude toward those who are members, fellow members of the body of Christ. We need to have an on-it-go. We need to have times of confession. We need to have more prayer. We need to have times of self-humiliation. I think all of these are perfectly legitimate and perfectly good. But you know what made my heart sad was that I don't believe one single person suggested that what we really need is not new methods so much as a return to obedience to this book. Now maybe somebody did, but if they did, I missed it. And I read most of the literature at the time about it. Could it not be that instead of altering the facade of the building, instead of working up programs that what God wants is broken us apart, and a confession that in many ways we have departed from the simplicity that is in Christ. Could it be that we're not practicing the pattern that we have in the Scriptures, both individually and collectively in our lives? And I'm not talking about mere traditional styles of how we do this and that. I'm talking about the basics of church work and church things. But we can talk about the cosmetics, the cosmetic surgery, brightening the things up, better programs, better this. I think, and I am convinced from the Word of God, and I have a heart burden about this, that what we all need, myself included, is a return simple obedience to what's written in the Word of God and to quit quibbling about things, but rather to bow to what God has clearly delineated in His Word and not try to find reasons for not doing it, to rationalize our disobedience. I once asked a man how he would define the word rationalizing. He said, well, a colleague of mine A law colleague of mine once suggested a good definition to me, and he said he defined it as looking for an intellectual justification for something which we knew we had to be crazy to do in the first place. Just think that went over. Looking for an intellectually acceptable excuse for something which we knew we had to be crazy to do in the first place. Let's not rationalize. Let's not argue. Let's not debate and quibble and squabble about unimportant things. But everything that is in this book is important, and please never, ever say something that's clearly stated in Scripture. Well, is it so important? Who are you to decide what is important and what is not? I'd like to... Well, I know. It's not a question of liking to know. But I know what would have happened to me. Had my father told me to do something, and I had not done it, and when he challenged me about it, I said, well, I didn't do it because I didn't think it was so very important. He said, I'm the one who would decide whether it's important or not, not you. I gave you the instructions. Or if you ordered a building to be put up, or part of an organization that did it, you had a blueprint. And the builders began mucking around with the architects' blueprints, the engineering blueprints, and all the rest of it. And well, you know, we didn't think it was terribly important. They are not the ones who have the parts, not within their limits, not within their authority to decide whether a thing is important or unimportant. Theirs is to work according to the blueprint. That's what this man was trying to do. Now look at verse nine. Lo, our fathers have fallen by the sword. Our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity. They were in a bondage because of this. Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel that a fierce wrath may turn away from us. My sons, be not nigh negligence, for the Lord has chosen you to stand before and stare at him that you should minister unto him and burn incense. Then the Levites arose. He gives a list of their names. And verse fifteen they gathered their brethren. They influenced each other. One influenced another, and they gathered their brethren and sanctified themselves. There was a mutual self-judging in the presence of God. And they came according to the commandment of the king by the words of the Lord to cleanse the house of the Lord. And into the inner part. part of the house of the Lord, to cleanse it. They brought out all the uncleanness they found in the temple of the Lord, in the court of the house of the Lord. The Levites took it to carry it abroad to the Brook Tehran, the place of judgment. They began at the first day of the first month, sanctified the eighth day of the month, came they to the porch of the Lord, and they sanctified the house of the Lord in eight days. Now there's a parallel here to the feast of Jehovah, which you Bible students might go into. because all this took place in the first part of the first month, the month of Passover. And when we get to the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, we shall find that a lot of the operations there took place in the seventh month, which is a very important and critical month in their calendar. And they took all of this stuff out. By the sixteenth day of the first month, they had made it end. And then they said, we cleanse all the house of the Lord. The altar of burnt offering, with all the vessels around, the showbread table, with all the vessels around, and all the vessels which King Ahaz and his reign did cast away in his transgression, things that he considered as unimportant, are now brought into their proper perspective and their proper place of importance. We have prepared all of this and sanctified it, and behold, they are before the altar. You notice that they started at God's portion. We hear the cry everywhere these days. You know, is it so terribly important that we should sit in warm fused in a building? Wouldn't we be better out on the streets reaching people for Christ, giving out tracks? Now, I have discovered that some of the people who say that are people who don't give out tracks. Not all of them, but some of them. Quite a few of them, as a matter of fact. We want to get out and do work among men. May I suggest to you that true revival will begin not at activity among men, but it will begin at the center and core of our beings in giving to God that which God requires and demands. They set up the altar. It was the altar of burnt offerings. That was one where God got everything. Everything was burned for him. Man did not eat it. Man did not share in it. Neither the priest nor the offer. It was totally consumed for God's pleasure. That is where we have to start. Establish in our hearts an altar where God will get his due and his place in worship and adoration and devotion and dedication. The man who knows how to worship or the woman will be the man or the woman who knows how to serve. Everything for God begins at the altar of burnt offerings. Under Zerubbabel, Nehemiah, Ezra, and the rest of them who came back at the time of the restoration, they did not begin by building the wall. They did not begin by trying to convert the Samaritans, nor Sanballat, nor any of those men who were around about them. They began by setting up the altar. They didn't even build the walls of the temple first. They set up the altar. They began where God begins in the book of Leviticus with the burnt offering, giving God his proper place. That's what God wants of you and what he wants of me today. He wants us to set up an altar at the very core of our beings where he will get the whole being in totality. And if he's not getting that, then don't you think that you can satisfy him by going out and engaging in activity. Am I running dying activity in the way of soul winning? Don't be foolish. I'd walk more miles carrying the gospel through the bush in Africa and ridden on bicycles and carried in hammocks and on old motorbikes and every other conceivable way. I'd probably walk more hundreds of miles than most of you here would ever walk miles carrying the gospel. I've devoted my whole life to the work of their gospel. I am not against activity in bringing men and women to Christ. I'm all for it. But I believe that we must start with God. That's where the work of Christ started. Glory to God in the harvest. And in earth, peace good will to man. God came first. Father, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. My meat is to do the will of him that sent him. God was always first, even in the sacrifice of Calvary, for he was the burnt offering. He was the burnt offering, and that was the one that was totally consumed for God. Nothing was retained for anybody. All went up for God. That's where we must begin. You read of a sin offering at verse twenty-one, and as we go down to verse twenty-five, for I must hurry, my time is gone. In verse twenty-five he set the Levites in the house of the Lord with symbols, with saltries, with hearts, according to the commandment of David. Hey, what are we getting at here? Here's David's pattern all over again, isn't it? According to the commandment of David and of God, the king's seer, and Nathan the prophet. Now this was not God at Nathan who were seer and prophet to King Hezekiah. Oh, no. This is Gad, the prophet in the day, sorry, Gad, the seer, and Nathan, the prophet of King David, for standing on either side and behind this great man, David, were three men. One was Gad. He was a seer. He was a man of spiritual perception who could see ahead as God revealed things. Mathen was a prophet, a man who received messages from God. He was the man who pointed his finger right at David's heart and said, You are the man who has sinned. And then behind him stood a priest called Zadok. Now I want you to remember these men. Their names come ringing down right into Second Chronicles twenty-nine. And he said, This whole pattern of a king with a seer, a prophet, and a priest surrounding him. That's why David was the man he was. In the days of Josiah, we're going to read about a prophet called, a priest, sorry, called Hilkiah. And Hilkiah was a direct descendant four times removed of this man, Zadok. You can find this genealogy right in Scripture. Now you say, how come there are just four generations from the prophet, David's prophet, to Hilkiah in the days of Josiah, Josiah, Whereas there are twelve generations of kings in between. Some of those kings were mighty tawdry kings, and they didn't last very long, a few months, a couple of years, and they were gone. But there's this thin red line of fidelity to Holy Scripture. There is this pilgrim church idea of E.H. Broadbent, that God has always had a faithful remnant of testimony to himself. from the day of Pentecost, and will have rights to the rapture. That God has always had a little remnant in Israel, those who sighed and cried in Ezekiel's day for the abominations that were committed in the land. Those who wept over the house of God. There's always been this. And so this thread comes down, godly men handing it on to each successive generation. The three men around David, have their men around Hezekiah, and their men around Josiah. For in Josiah's day, we read it till Chaya the priest. And he was a direct descendant, as I've said, four times removed. He was the fifth generation from Zadok. And, of course, we know that he, too, had a prophet there. We'll be reading about that in the will of God tomorrow morning, tomorrow, sometime early, whenever I'm speaking. But I'd like you to think of these links. Wouldn't you like to be a link? young brother read last evening about Ezra and Ezra was a priest and it just so happens that Ezra was the great great grandson of the Hilkiah the priest who had discovered the book of the law in the days of Josiah and it just so happens that Zerubbabel who led the movement back to Jerusalem was the great great grandson of this king Josiah so there were links all the way. Why did Ezra, why did Zerubbabel and Nehemiah and Ezra, Haggai and Zechariah and these men, why did they come up? Because there was an old man in Jerusalem, sorry, an old man in the land of Babylon called Daniel. And the whole story hinges really on this faithful man. He's on his knees and he has the scriptures open and he's reading and he understands the time of the captivity is almost at an end. Now, during the days of Hezekiah, there were three great prophets, ministers, Isaiah, Lucia, and Micah. Read their books, and you will see why Hezekiah acted the way he did. There are all these links, influences. And then when we get to Daniel, Daniel was contemporary for quite a while, for some time anyway, with Jeremiah. And with Ezekiel for quite a while, and Daniel's life stretched right through the whole seventy years of the captivity, a faithful man. He would not eat the food of Babylon because God's word had prohibited it. It was offered to idols, you see. And he would have no part of it. And he carried right through to the time of the return. He was the man who influenced King Cyrus. who let the children of Israel come back and see the thrill of this whole picture linking itself together. Why am I talking about this? I'm talking about it because God is still looking for links. Men and women who will make it their business to set, repair their hearts, to seek after the law of the Lord, to do it and to teach it. Men who like Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, will carry the product