The Liturgy of Taking Out the Trash Text: 2 Chronicles 29:5-19
Introduction: The Sanctity of the Broom Closet
We live in an age of sloppy, sentimental, and ultimately useless Christianity. The modern evangelical church has become adept at rearranging the furniture in the living room while the basement is flooded with sewage and there is a dead possum in the attic. We talk about mission statements, community engagement, and seeker sensitivity, but we refuse to deal with the fundamental filth that has accumulated in the house of God. We have convinced ourselves that holiness is an abstract, internal feeling, and has nothing to do with the lamps being out, the doors being shut, and the altar being cluttered with pagan refuse.
The story of Hezekiah's reformation is a bracing corrective to all such nonsense. It is a story about a king who understood that revival is not a feeling; it is a cleansing. It is not a conference; it is a confrontation with sin. Reformation begins with a clear-eyed diagnosis of the apostasy, continues with the dirty work of taking out the trash, and results in the restoration of true, God-centered worship. This is not a quiet, personal affair. It is a public, liturgical, and covenantal renewal.
Hezekiah inherited a disaster. His father Ahaz was a world-class idolater who had boarded up the temple and turned the nation over to foreign gods. The consequences were not theoretical; they were catastrophic. The wrath of God had fallen upon them in the form of military defeat and exile. Hezekiah understood what our generation has forgotten: there is a direct, causal link between how a nation worships and how a nation fares. Liturgical apostasy leads to national ruin. Therefore, national restoration must begin with liturgical reformation. Before Hezekiah deals with the Assyrians, before he fixes the economy, he opens the house of God and gets out the brooms.
This passage is a blueprint for genuine revival. It teaches us that before we can offer anything acceptable to God, we must first deal with the accumulated filth of our unfaithfulness. It is a call for the men of God to stop being at ease, to remember their calling, and to get their hands dirty for the glory of God and the cleansing of His church.
The Text
Then he said to them, “Listen to me, O Levites. Set yourselves apart now as holy, and set apart as holy the house of Yahweh, the God of your fathers, and bring out the impurity from the holy place. For our fathers have been unfaithful and have done what is evil in the sight of Yahweh our God, and have forsaken Him and turned their faces away from the dwelling place of Yahweh, and have turned their backs. They have also shut the doors of the porch and put out the lamps, and have not burned incense or offered burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel. Therefore the wrath of Yahweh was against Judah and Jerusalem, and He has made them an object of terror, of horror, and of hissing, as you see with your own eyes. And behold, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this. Now it is in my heart to cut a covenant with Yahweh, the God of Israel, that His burning anger may turn away from us. My sons, do not be at ease now, for Yahweh has chosen you to stand before Him, to minister to Him, and to be His ministers and offer offerings up in smoke.”
Then the Levites arose: Mahath, the son of Amasai and Joel the son of Azariah, from the sons of the Kohathites; and from the sons of Merari, Kish the son of Abdi and Azariah the son of Jehallelel; and from the Gershonites, Joah the son of Zimmah and Eden the son of Joah; and from the sons of Elizaphan, Shimri and Jeiel; and from the sons of Asaph, Zechariah and Mattaniah; and from the sons of Heman, Jehiel and Shimei; and from the sons of Jeduthun, Shemaiah and Uzziel. And they gathered their brothers, set themselves apart as holy, and went in to cleanse the house of Yahweh, according to the commandment of the king by the words of Yahweh. So the priests went in to the inner part of the house of Yahweh to cleanse it, and every unclean thing which they found in the temple of Yahweh they brought out to the court of the house of Yahweh. Then the Levites received it to bring out to the Kidron valley, to an outer area. Then they began to set it apart as holy on the first day of the first month, and on the eighth day of the month they entered the porch of Yahweh. Then they set apart the house of Yahweh as holy in eight days, and completed it on the sixteenth day of the first month. Then they went in to King Hezekiah and said, “We have cleansed the whole house of Yahweh, the altar of burnt offering with all of its utensils, and the table of showbread with all of its utensils. Moreover, all the utensils which King Ahaz had rejected during his reign in his unfaithfulness, we have prepared and set apart as holy; and behold, they are before the altar of Yahweh.”
(2 Chronicles 29:5-19 LSB)
The King's Diagnosis and Charge (v. 5-11)
Hezekiah begins with an honest and brutal assessment of the situation. He doesn't sugarcoat it. He gathers the Levites, the men ordained for the service of the temple, and lays the truth bare.
"Listen to me, O Levites. Set yourselves apart now as holy, and set apart as holy the house of Yahweh, the God of your fathers, and bring out the impurity from the holy place." (2 Chronicles 29:5 LSB)
Notice the order. Reformation begins with the reformers. Before they can cleanse the temple, they must consecrate themselves. You cannot clean a house with a dirty rag. This is the constant temptation for would-be reformers: to point out the specks in everyone else's eyes while ignoring the log in their own. Hezekiah insists that personal holiness precedes corporate cleansing. And the task is blunt: "bring out the impurity." The word here is niddah, which refers to ceremonial and moral filthiness. This isn't about dusting; it's about spiritual decontamination.
Hezekiah then names the sin of their fathers. They were "unfaithful," they did "evil," they "forsook Him." This was not a passive drift; it was an active rebellion. They "turned their faces away" and "turned their backs." This is the essence of apostasy: a deliberate reorientation away from the presence of God. The symptoms were liturgical: doors shut, lamps out, no incense, no offerings. When a church stops worshipping according to God's Word, it is a sign that they have already turned their backs on God Himself. Bad liturgy is the fever that reveals the disease of an unfaithful heart.
The consequences, Hezekiah says, are undeniable. "The wrath of Yahweh was against Judah and Jerusalem." This wrath manifested as terror, horror, hissing, death, and captivity. Hezekiah is not offering a therapeutic platitude. He is a prophet-king interpreting their current events through a covenantal lens. Our suffering is not random; it is the righteous judgment of a holy God against our sin. We are a hissing because we have forsaken Him.
But diagnosis is not the end. Hezekiah pivots to the solution: "Now it is in my heart to cut a covenant with Yahweh." This is the only way forward. Not a new program, not a five-year plan, but a solemn, binding renewal of their relationship with God. The goal is specific: "that His burning anger may turn away from us." And he concludes with a direct, fatherly charge to the Levites: "My sons, do not be at ease now." Complacency is the enemy of reformation. God has chosen them for this work, to stand before Him and minister. It is time to stop being negligent and to start being ministers.
The Levites Arise and Obey (v. 12-17)
The response to Hezekiah's charge is immediate and encouraging. The men of God respond to the man of God.
"Then the Levites arose..." (2 Chronicles 29:12 LSB)
The Chronicler gives us a roll call. This is not an anonymous committee; these are named men, heads of families, who stood up to be counted. Mahath, Joel, Kish, Azariah, and the rest. Reformation is never carried out by abstractions; it is carried out by faithful men who are willing to lead. These men gathered their brothers, consecrated themselves as commanded, and got to work.
Their work was done "according to the commandment of the king by the words of Yahweh." This is the principle of biblical authority. The king gives the command, but his command is not arbitrary. It is grounded in and expressive of the Word of God. This is how God's authority flows into the world: through delegated authorities who are themselves submitted to His Word. This is the pattern for the family, the church, and the state.
The cleansing process itself was orderly. The priests, who alone could enter the holiest places, went into the inner sanctuary. They brought all the unclean things they found out to the court. From there, the Levites took over, hauling the filth outside the city to the Kidron Valley. The Kidron was Jerusalem's garbage dump. This is a profound theological statement. The residue of idolatry, the sacred objects of false worship, the accumulated grime of neglect, is all treated as what it is: trash. It is to be hauled out and dumped in the ravine. We are not to sentimentalize our idols or our sins. We are to treat them like garbage.
This was not a quick fix. It took sixteen days of hard, dirty labor. They began on the first day of the first month, and finished on the sixteenth. Real cleansing takes time. It is meticulous, thorough, and exhausting work. There are no shortcuts to holiness.
The Report of a Clean House (v. 18-19)
After the work is done, the Levites report back to the king. Their report is a model of thoroughness and faithfulness.
"Then they went in to King Hezekiah and said, 'We have cleansed the whole house of Yahweh, the altar of burnt offering with all of its utensils, and the table of showbread with all of its utensils.'" (2 Chronicles 29:18 LSB)
They didn't just clean the main areas. They cleansed the whole house, including "all of its utensils." This is the difference between true and false repentance. True repentance is comprehensive. It deals not only with the big, obvious sins, but also with the smaller instruments and habits of sin. It is not enough to get rid of the Baal statue if you keep the little household idols on the mantle.
Furthermore, they did more than just remove the filth. They restored what had been desecrated. "Moreover, all the utensils which King Ahaz had rejected during his reign in his unfaithfulness, we have prepared and set apart as holy; and behold, they are before the altar of Yahweh." Reformation is not just about subtraction; it is also about addition and restoration. They took the instruments of worship that Ahaz had thrown out, and they cleaned them, consecrated them, and put them back in their proper place, ready for use. True revival cleanses the house so that true worship can begin again.
Christ, Our Hezekiah
This entire account is a glorious picture of the gospel. As good a king as Hezekiah was, he was but a shadow of the true King who would come to cleanse a far greater temple. When Jesus Christ came, He found the house of God in Jerusalem filled with a different kind of filth: the greed and corruption of the money-changers. And like Hezekiah, He did not stand for it. He braided a whip and drove them out, declaring, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers" (Matthew 21:13).
But His ultimate cleansing work was not on a building of stone, but on the temple of His people, the church. We, like Judah, had turned our backs on God. We were filled with the niddah, the impurity of sin. Our hearts were a house of horrors, and the wrath of God was justly upon us. We were helpless to cleanse ourselves.
So Christ, the great High Priest, entered the inner sanctuary, not with the blood of bulls and goats, but with His own blood. On the cross, He gathered up all of our filth, all of our idolatry, all of our unfaithfulness, and carried it out of the city, bearing our shame. He took our garbage upon Himself and disposed of it forever in the grave. Through His resurrection, He has consecrated a new temple, the church, and has consecrated us as a royal priesthood.
The call of Hezekiah to the Levites is now Christ's call to us. "My sons, do not be at ease now." He has chosen us to stand before Him and to minister. He calls us to the ongoing work of sanctification, to take the Word of God as our authority, and to cleanse the house. This means we must be ruthless in identifying the idols in our own hearts, in our homes, and in our churches, and hauling them to the cosmic Kidron Valley. We must restore the rejected utensils of true worship: robust preaching, reverent sacraments, and joyful, psalm-singing praise. The King has cleansed His temple by His blood; let us now, as His faithful ministers, arise and take out the trash.