Time to refocus
(Renewing our covenant)
2 Kings 23:1-3 (NLT)
Then the king summoned all the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem. [2] And the king went up to the Temple of the Lord with all the people of Judah and Jerusalem, and the priests, and the prophets—all the people from the least to the greatest. There the king read to them the entire Book of the Covenant that had been found in the Lord's Temple. [3] The king took his place of authority beside the pillar and renewed the covenant in the Lord's presence. He pledged to obey the Lord by keeping all his commands, regulations, and laws with all his heart and soul. In this way, he confirmed all the terms of the covenant that were written in the scroll, and all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.
In order for you to ever have a chance of hearing God’s voice you must first obey His written word, all words put on paper called your Bible.
1. Reread the terms- 2 kings 23:3
a. Why did he renew the covenant? Well he did not want to be cursed.
b. Deut. 27:26 (NLT) 'Cursed is anyone who does not affirm the terms of this law by obeying them.' And all the people will reply, 'Amen.'
c. Deut. 28:1-2 (NLT) "If you fully obey the Lord your God by keeping all the commands I am giving you today, the Lord your God will exalt you above all the nations of the world. [2] You will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God:
d. There is a curse and a blessing. Which one are you living in?
i. The curses are in Deut. 27:15-26
ii. The blessings are in Deut. 28:3-6
e. The man of God Elijah told Elisha think about what you want?
i. 1 Kings 19:19-20 (NLT) So Elijah went and found Elisha son of Shaphat plowing a field with a team of oxen. There were eleven teams of oxen ahead of him, and he was plowing with the twelfth team. Elijah went over to him and threw his cloak across his shoulders and walked away again. [20] Elisha left the oxen standing there, ran after Elijah, and said to him, "First let me go and kiss my father and mother good-bye, and then I will go with you!" Elijah replied, "Go on back! But consider what I have done to you."
ii. Elijah gave Elisha three chances to go home in 2 Kings 2 verse 2, 4 and 6 he I am going to Bethel, Jericho and Jordan River. Elisha said “I will never leave you”.
f. You should have a time of reading, praying, studying your word and giving it out to others.
g. I think about the story of Adam and Eve and how she did not have a good understanding of the terms of the promise God had given to Adam. So the enemy came in an stole from them all that God had given them.
2. Destroying your idols –
a. Ezekiel 43:9 (NLT)
b. Now let them put away their idols and the sacred pillars erected to honor their kings, and I will live among them forever.
c. Why are idols in our houses?
d. ILLUSTRATION:A story is told of a man who loved old books. He met an acquaintance who had just thrown away a Bible that had been stored in the attic of his ancestral home for generations. "I couldn’t read it," the friend explained. "Somebody named Guten-something had printed it." "Not Gutenberg!" the book lover exclaimed in horror. "That Bible was one of the first books ever printed. Why, a copy just sold for over two million dollars!" His friend was unimpressed. "Mine wouldn’t have brought a dollar. Some fellow named Martin Luther had scribbled all over it in German."
e. Judas was a man that walked with Jesus and at the end he betrayed him.
f. Our nation is going through some hard times but as a people, we do not want to put away our idols.
g. There was a time when our nation was going through a hard time- listen to this:
i. By the President of the United States of America.
ii. A Proclamation.
iii. Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation. And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion. All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.
iv. By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward, Secretary of State.
h. Can we commit to the Lord with all our hearts this day.
3. Counting the cost of the covenant-
a. Matthew 16:24-25 (NLT) Then Jesus said to the disciples, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me. [25] If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life.
b. People do not understand you because you live a life that pleases God and if it pleases God it will probably not please people. You the fleshly person does not understand the spirit person.
c. Jesus gave it all for us should we not do the same for our Lord?
d. God gave it all
i. Romans 8:32 (NLT)
ii. Since God did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won't God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else?
e. The disciples gave it all-
i. Matthew 19:27-29 (NLT) Then Peter said to him, "We've given up everything to follow you. What will we get out of it?" [28] And Jesus replied, "I assure you that when I, the Son of Man, sit upon my glorious throne in the Kingdom, you who have been my followers will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. [29] And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will have eternal life.
God is taking us to a level that can only be seen by those that can see in spirit. Therefore you must have the mind of Christ to be able to understand these things.
1 Cor. 2:16 (NLT)
How could they? For, "Who can know what the Lord is thinking? Who can give him counsel?" But we can understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.
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