Hezekiah's clean up of the Temple

Tracing the path of Joy through the OT. Pastor’s sermon on Hezekiah, showed me much of what God placed in that portion of Scripture. I only think about Hez as the man that compromised his faith and sought repentance and won 15 extra years of life, in mercy. I really didn’t notice the passage that Pastor remarked about until a couple of weeks ago. I had read it, but I hadn’t noticed the joy that was restored to God’s people through the ministry of Hezekiah. A king that had a heart for God and God gave him the gift of joy and it says that there had not been joy like that in Israel since the temple was built in Solomon’s day. Sacrifices were made such that they had to hire people other than the Levites to process the sacrifices. What an amazing revelation of God’s true gifts to His people. We look at the gifts of gold and frankenscense and myrrh and stuff around the tree as gifts. But God, gave to these people something that was felt and noted in scripture as a better gift than the wealth that there was in Solomon’s day. Wealth has its place and God does give even that to people richly to enjoy. He lavishes and enjoys the wealth of the beauty of His creation and said each day of creation that it was good. He joys and comes present and basks, as it were in the praises of His people. He is rich with those praises from His redeemed creation. That is a song that no other portion of creation can raise and the scripture states that God inhabits it. He expects us to note the presence and the absence of joy in the midst of the people and seek it when absent. Something that is very hard to ascertain in some ways. I have been in places where the music and the beauty of praise of God was there and the joy of the Lord was not. I have been in places where there were no instruments and not a trained voice in the bunch and the joy of the Lord was most evident. God gives us discernment. Making His praise glorious can have much to do with as it were “tuning our hearts to sing His praise” “ Streams of mercy calling for sounds of loudest praise.” If God has taught us the sonnet, we should sing it with trained or untrained voices. Let us not be deceived by the beauty of the sound. Let us not be deceived by the riches of the things that we posess as the children of Israel may have been and then get surprised when it is said of us,there was no joy in the camp from this time to that time, and we were not aware. Let us offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving to God and stoke those flames daily lest the muck and mire of the garbage thrown in the temple keep our hearts from truly giving Him the glory. Choirs of angelic voices and orchestras of the most beautiful arrangements cannot replace the joy of the Lord, in the midst of the people of God. When God is praised, the most special gift that He bestows is the joy of the Lord. It is our strength. When we were without strength…We know that Jesus died for us. Also there is a return that He receives for the gifts that He gives. Rejoicing and praise, the sacrifice of praise in difficulty, sometimes through blinding tears. And the liberty of praise, whether loud or quiet undimmed by human dismay and grief is something to truly enjoy. God enters into that. God gives strength for the weary and rejoicing to His people in the midst of every circumstance.