Hezekiah became king when he was twenty-five years old, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abijah the daughter of Zechariah. And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done. In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. Then he brought in the priests and the Levites, and gathered them in the East Square, and said to them: “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 29:1-5 NKJV. 

When I was a boy my job was to take out the trash and burn it. I did that for years while I was growing up. Living on a farm it was the way we eliminated much of our trash. I did catch the chicken house on fire once, but thankfully I was able to put the fire out with a nearby water hose. You would think after that, my parents would have given my trash duties to my sister, but no, I still had the trash removal duties. 

The thing about trash is that if you don’t remove it on a regular basis it piles up. When there is a back up in the trash removal it causes a mess which just grows larger and larger until it can no longer be ignored. Sometimes, you could say that the trash problem reaches critical mass, and something has to be done. 

When Hezekiah became king, the trash problem at the house of the Lord, looked like it had reached critical mass. Hezekiah began to do something about it. So, Hezekiah ordered the Levites to clean all the rubbish out of the house of the Lord. “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.” This began a time of revival in Judah. 

What does this have to do with us? 1 Corinthians 3:16 tells us, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” If you know Jesus as your Savior, your body is the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you. Sadly, our individual temples have a tendency to fill up with rubbish like Hezekiah’s house of the Lord. The rubbish we have to deal with is called “sin.” If we want to have a personal revival, we must take out the trash. 1 John 1:9 tells us how to do that: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 

How long has it been since you have taken out the trash?