Ok – I’m getting granular.

😲 Gasp! Not you! Shocking. 😏

Alright smarty-pants.

I know that the reading plan lists 2 Kings 18, but that one chapter covers the entire scope of King Hezekiah’s life and reign. Verse 13 to the end covers a bit of history that we don’t read about until 2 Chronicles 32 and Isaiah 36. So I’m going to hold off and try to cover all of that content at the same time.

For now, we’ll look at the early part of Hezekiah’s reign.

HEZEKIAH’S REVIVAL

Recall that Hezekiah’s father, the extremely wicked Ahaz, had literally CLOSED the Temple.

Hezekiah’s first order of business was to reopen the temple.

I LOVE this team of young Levite men who are faithful to Yahweh. Remember Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthan, the Levitical prophet-priests who led the music for the temple’s dedication back in the days of Solomon? That was 200 years ago. Now their descendants join in with a few other loyal men to reopen and re-dedicate the temple.

But first, they have to haul out the junk.

Imagine them pushing open the doors and going into first the courtyard… it’s very possible that there were the bones 🦴 of sacrificial animals lying about that had never been removed. Hides. Ashes. Broken vessels. Broken tables. Rusting implements. Piles of rotting wood. Patches of weeds. The water in the laver was stagnant and green and squiggling with insect larvae. 🐛

We know that Ahaz had looted the temple to pay off the Assyrians (2 Kings 16). The magnificent bronze oxen that had held up the giant bronze laver were long gone. Melted down. The brazen altar had been moved from its place. It’s likely that some of the gold and silver plating had been stripped from the walls and melted down to pay off foreign kings or to pay for mercenary armies in the past.

This is HUGE project. But the Levites set to work.

“They began to consecrate on the first day of the first month, and on the eighth day of the month they came to the vestibule of the Lord. Then for eight days they consecrated the house of the Lord, and on the sixteenth day of the first month they finished.”
‭‭2 Chronicles‬ ‭29‬:‭17‬ ‭ESV‬‬

It took 8 days just to work their way through the mess in the courtyard! I would think this involved getting a team of men and oxen to move the huge brazen altar back to its rightful place.

When the courtyard is set to rights, they open the doors to the holy place…

Imagine them going into the dark space with torches… Perhaps the gold paneling is still intact but covered with layers of dust and grime. It had been shut up for years. I’m sure everything was dusty and cobwebbed. There may have been broken pottery, more ashes, animal droppings, cups and bowls with the dried crusty remains of wine, random bits of discarded clothing… it was probably like cleaning out an old abandoned house.

This cleansing and dedication feels like a foreshadowing of the 8-day-temple-cleansing in 164 BC after it had been desecrated by the Greeks. That cleansing involved the Menorah burning miraculously for 8 days when it had only enough oil for 1 day. That event is what is celebrated every year at Hanukkah. 🕎

In Hezekiah’s dedication it wasn’t oil they were short on. It was priests. There weren’t enough priests who had gone through the proper consecration to serve at the dedication so the Levites who were ceremonially clean helped offer the sacrifices.

This “revival” was very simple.

They returned to THE BOOK.

If we would see revival in our communities today, it’s very simple. It does not require some big-wig preacher or healing evangelist. No need for smoke and lights and a slick band and dazzling singers.

If we want revival we only have to do what Hezekiah did: Return to the Book.

And when they did, it made Hezekiah realize that there was something valuable from their past that it was time to let go of.

“He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan).”
‭‭2 Kings‬ ‭18‬:‭4‬ ‭ESV‬‬

God had instructed Moses to make the bronze serpent. Jesus even said it was a prophetic picture of HIM!

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
‭‭John‬ ‭3‬:‭14‬-‭15‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The bronze serpent was not originally an idol. It was a good thing. A God-thing. But people, (as we are inclined to do), held on to it and began to have more faith in it than in God Himself. It once was used by Yahweh to miraculously heal. It was an irreplaceable artifact; tangible proof of what God had done for His people in the wilderness.

When God does something supernatural, people flock to it. Revivals pop up in churches or on campuses and the next thing you know, people are traveling from near and far to experience it- to receive healing, to feel a powerful presence of God, heck, maybe even get a supernatural gold tooth-filling.

I have never been one to chase such phenomena. God is the same everywhere, right? He’s not partial to one person over another. So I’ve always figured He can meet me just as powerfully in my living room as in some revival hot spot.

I once went to a place where one of these famous revivals had happened and was still going years later. Some people had truly been healed. I knew a lady who was healed at this particular place and others who had powerful experiences. I wasn’t there by choice. Let’s call it a field trip. And I was certainly curious to see what all the fuss had been about. Some of my companions went forward for prayer. There was certainly a lot of… something happening. People were crowded near the front weeping, many sprawled on the floor, some visibly trembling…

Now, y’all, I grew up from infancy hearing prayer and worship in unknown tongues and seeing people “fall out” under the power of God. I have experienced many such things myself. I wasn’t a rookie sitting in that place looking on in bewilderment. None of this was new. I was simply observing and trying to discern. And whatever it was that others were experiencing, I wasn’t sensing a thing. Not a thing. So much so that I began a heart-check… “Lord… is there something wrong with me? Am I totally out of touch? Do I need to go up for prayer?” His answer in my spirit was something like, “No. You can just relax right here. I’m not in this.”

😳 Whoah…

Like the bronze serpent, we want to preserve powerful manifestations of God’s presence. What starts as joyously wanting to share the miraculous can quickly turn into pressure to “keep it going.”

Why though? Do we believe that there’s some shortage of… God? That we’re going to run out of access to His eternal, limitless grace? That strikes me as the biggest bunch of nonsense… As if Jesus – Who fed 5000 on 5 loaves 🥖and 2 fish 🐟 – is going to say, “Sorry. We’re all out today.”

It’s like the great toilet paper shortage of Covid. 🙄🧻 People thronged Costco and Walmart to stockpile Charmin out of FEAR.

“We’re gonna run out! I gotta hold on to this miracle that God did back in the 1900s…” No. No you don’t. God’s mercies are “new every morning,” (Lam. 3:23).

Quit hanging on to the past.

“But it was a supernatural move of God!”

So was the bronze serpent.

Don’t look to that thing that God did in the past and try to drag it into the present as if that’s the only way God can touch His people.

The bronze serpent’s purpose was complete. It did what it was meant to do for the children of Israel at that time. I’d wager that most of the people in Hezekiah’s day didn’t even know what its original purpose was. They called it Nekhushtan which just means “the bronze thing.” To them, it was a 700 year old mysterious relic with stories of miraculous healings.

I’m sure the people who brought offerings to it meant well. Perhaps they were hoping for a miracle for a sick loved one.

But, whether they intended it or not, clinging to it rather than seeking the Lord directly amounted to idolatry.

Part of restoring fellowship with Yahweh involved letting go of the thing He had used in the past to heal them.

🪑 Here’s a chair. You might want to sit and ponder that for a minute.

The restoration and reactivation of the temple wasn’t something that had been planned for years. When the Levites got the place cleaned up, it just all came together quickly because God was in it:

“And Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced because God had provided for the people, for the thing came about suddenly.”
‭‭2 Chronicles‬ ‭29‬:‭36‬ ‭ESV‬‬

I have experienced God’s “suddenly” in my own life. When He is at work, things will move. He will provide. It doesn’t take Him years and years to get His temple back into service. (I’m now talking about people, for those of you on the back row…) Don’t worry. Trust Him. God can cause the thing to “come about suddenly.”