Time To Take Out The Trash

When faced with crisis, the last thing we end up doing is actually the first thing we ought to be doing. But this wasn’t the case with King Hezekiah.

When Hezekiah was faced with the Assyrian crisis, He didn’t start by securing his borders and making preparations, instead he looked to the Lord God and to His temple that had been neglected and desecrated by his predecessors.

The first thing Hezekiah did was to call upon the spiritual leaders cleanse both themselves and the Temple.

“Hear me, Levites! Now sanctify yourselves, sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, and carry out the rubbish from the holy place.” (2 Chronicles 29:5 NKJV)

Levites were the priests tasked by God to take care of the temple. With the temple shut down no one was ceremonially clean and therefore they couldn’t perform their duties. Therefore both the temple and the priest were to be cleansed, that is, they were to be free from everything that defiles.

The first thing Hezekiah did, therefore, was to call these priests to sanctify themselves, that is, to separate themselves to God, and to carry out the trash.
Believers are today’s priests tasked by God to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

“Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5 NKJV).

What Hezekiah tasked the Levites to do, the Lord tasks us with today. To sanctify ourselves, that is, separate ourselves and remove everything that defiles us in the sight of God.

God’s temple is now within every believer in Jesus Christ. “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19 NKJV)

Therefore, it’s time we took the trash out of our lives.