Our granddaughter is 4. She loves art! Many times, when we see her she brings us a picture that she drew for us.  For special occasions, her gift she gives is a picture or card she made for us.  They are beautiful! Of course, not in the Van Gogh way, but in a-4-year-old-granddaughter-that-loves-us-so-much-and-wants-to-express-her-love-to-us-way. (Read that fast and you can actually hear me talking.) We keep and display most of her artwork. She shows us her love through her gifts. It’s her heart for us that make her artwork so beautiful! This picture is one she drew of her Punkin (yes that’s my husband’s grandfather name) and her at the ranch. We had just bought a disc swing to hang off a tree and the picture shows them deciding where to place it. We cherish it because she had picked out THE tree the swing was to go on, and she had both of them ready to play. This gift of the picture showed her Punkin that she loved him. My love language is gifts. These sweet cards and pictures she creates to give to my husband and me go right to my heart.

King Hezekiah gave gifts to His God. Let’s take a few minutes and look at all he did to show God how much he loved Him. 2 Chronicles 28-30 is the base for this blog. It is the story of King Hezekiah.  This section of scripture takes place during the time of Isaiah.  It is now the divided kingdom.  Israel is the northern kingdom and Judah is southern kingdom. In chapter 28 Ahaz was the king of Judah.  Before King Ahaz his father, King Jotham, followed God.  2 Chronicles 27:6 describes Jotham this way.  “He walked steadfastly before the LORD his God.”Ahaz did not follow in Jotham’s footsteps.  Ahaz had other plans.  Ahaz became king when was 20 years old.  2 Chronicles 28:1, 6, and 19 give a great picture of Ahaz. “He did not do what was right in the sight of God.” “…Had forsaken the LORD…” “…promoted wickedness in Judah and had been most unfaithful to the LORD.”  This was King Hezekiah’s father. This was the kingdom he inherited. This was the legacy that King Hezekiah, Judah’s new king was left with.

Hezekiah is an interesting king. In many ways he was like our granddaughter.  He gave the best gifts he could possibly give to God. His heart belonged only to God, so all he gave may have looked like these precious pictures my husband and I receive. God was important to Hezekiah. God was his priority. He honored God and showed others how to give their hearts to God. God loved him and blessed him because of his heart. Let’s look at the gifts he gave God.

“Now I intend to make a covenant with the LORD, the God of Israel, so that his fierce anger will turn away from us. My sons do not be negligent now, for the LORD has chosen you to stand before him and serve him, to minister before him and to burn incense.”In Hezekiah’s first month of reign he repaired the temple doors. This visual was for his kingdom to see he was leading them back to God.  That one act was not enough though. The desire to seek God had to be followed up with action. Hezekiah turned to the priests and Levites and told them to “clean up their acts” and “clean the place of worship” (my translation).  “When they had assembled their fellow Levites and consecrated themselves, they went in to purify the temple of the LORD, as the king had ordered, following the word of the LORD”  (verse 15).

Go to the next verse, 16. “They brought out to the courtyard of the LORD’S temple everything unclean that they found in the temple of the LORD.”  Step away from the story of Hezekiah and chase this rabbit trail for just a second. In 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 we read that we are God’s temple, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.” Pause a minute. Think. When was the last time I purified my temple? Hezekiah’s father, Ahaz, destroyed the Temple of God. God’s anger burned against him and Judah for the way he turned a sacred place into a place that honored other gods. It makes me ask, who lives in my temple? Do I live an unclean lifestyle that tarnishes and destroys where God lives? Or do I live a lifestyle that keeps God’s temple holy and sacred?

You may be thinking, but I’M A GOOD PERSON. I don’t break laws. I don’t murder, steal, lie or cheat (you know the big sins). How do I defile my temple? Can I ask you a question? Is it important to have the right clothes so you fit in with everyone? Is it important to drive the right car? What about be in the right social group….have the right friends, the one’s socially acceptable? Do you put out a “false” look of who you are to others? Do you tear others down and put them in their place so you look better than they do? Do you push others out of the way, their ideas and their plans, so you can do things the way you want? Pride destroys the temple of your heart where God lives. When pride takes over my life, my heart belongs to me and my wants, not God. I defile His temple when I allow my wants, rights, and things come before Him. So do you.

The rededication of the temple to the LORD was King Hezekiah’s next gift. He had the priests start with a sin offering to God. (Leviticus 4 describes sin offerings if you want to look further into that.) Hezekiah had 7 bulls, 7rams, 7male lambs, and 7male goats given as a sin offering. The number 7 is very significant. Seven means completeness or perfection in the Bible. It seems to me that Hezekiah was bringing before God all the sins that had been committed against Him. Hezekiah’s personal sins, the sins committed in the Temple of God, the sins committed by the priests and Levites, and sins by those in his kingdom.  He wanted complete atonement for all that had been done against Jehovah. Is there a better gift than having a relationship restored?  Being at odds with someone not only hurts, but creates a huge distance between those fighting. Having repentance and reconciliation with the one you are at odds with is a beautiful gift. Imagine how pleased God was when Hezekiah and the people of Judah asked to reconcile with Him through their sin offering.

It was during this time of sacrifice that Hezekiah had the Levites start their worship with music and song. 1 Chronicles 23:1-5 shows when King David instituted this. When I think back threw my life, some of my best times of worshipping was during times I was finding my way back to God.  I knew that it was He alone that I desired. It was only Him that could satisfy. God alone could forgive me. He alone would fill the hole that sin had left in my heart. The interesting part of this gift to me is that as much as King Hezekiah was physically showing God his love for Him, I think Hezekiah is the one that may have received the gift. The people of Judah worshipped God with total abandon. In 2 Chronicles 29:34 you read that there were so many animals brought to sacrifice that there were not enough priests to do the sacrifices. God had prepared the hearts of the people of Judah. During this time of worship and sacrifice they threw themselves at the feet of His throne and asked to be restored to Him. Worshipping with total abandon restores my soul. Hezekiah had to fill restored. He had to fill satisfied with all he saw in his kingdom, his people following God and living in covenant with Him. This had to have blessed Hezekiah (maybe it is “blessed to give than receive Acts 20:35).

As beautiful as these gifts were to God, there was another set of gifts that Hezekiah gave God. Let me digress a moment and tell you about a scene in an episode of the old TV show Eight Is Enough. The father, Tom Bradford, was sitting at the family kitchen table. He was troubled. His adult daughter, Jonie, walked in to the kitchen and saw him sitting there. In trying to help him, she offered to make him his FAVORITE sandwich. Tom’s response, “Please just fix me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  I hate peanut butter and sardine sandwiches.” Jonie was shocked, “But dad you always said that was your favorite!” Tom, “Jonie, I hated the sandwich, but I loved the heart of my 7-year-old daughter the first time she made it for me, and I was so grateful for what she did. I loved your heart each time you made it for me after that. BUT I hate the taste of peanut butter and sardines!” I think that some of the next gifts Hezekiah gave may have been more like peanut butter and sardine sandwiches. See what you think.

Look at 2 Chronicles 30. King Hezekiah is now ready to celebrate the Passover. His timing was off, by a month. The timing of the Passover (Numbers 9:1-14) could not be met because his priests had not been consecrated yet and he had not reached out to tribes in the Northern Kingdom. (30:1-5). Looks a bit like peanut butter and sardines to me. This could be
“hard for our Father to swallow”.  Hezekiah didn’t get it right! God rejected many in scripture for not honoring His law. After all the celebration was at the wrong time and many had not been consecrated. This next scripture though sets King Hezekiah’s actions apart from others that failed to follow God’s law. “…But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, “May the LORD, who is good, pardon everyone who sets their heart on seeking God – the LORD, the God of their ancestors– even if they are not clean according to the rules of the sanctuary. And the LORD heard Hezekiah and healed the people.” 2 Chronicles 30:18-20.  It’s a HEART issue.

Confession time.  Most of my life I have focused on the wrong thing when I worshipped God. I focused on how and when communion was taken, if the prayer was right, if the right man was preaching, if the songs in worship sounded pleasing to me. When I look at scripture, I’m much more like the Pharisees that did not have their heart right. The Pharisees that focused on getting the letter of the law right and at the same time persecuted Jesus. How is it I see so plainly what the Pharisees did in their lives, and not my own?  God wants MY HEART.  2 Chronicles 31:21, “In everything that he undertook in the service of God’s temple and in obedience to the law and the commands, he sought his God and worked wholeheartedly. And so he prospered.” 2 Kings 18:3 describes King Hezekiah this way: He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, just as his father David had done.”Wholeheartedly. God had his WHOLE HEART. Selfish preferences or desires did not get included in the package King Hezekiah gave God.

So what gift does my God want from me? He wants me to be dedicated to Him. He wants me to be in relationship with Him. He wants me to worship Him with all I have. He wants me to give Him my heart, my WHOLE HEART. These are gifts all of us can give. They don’t require a lot of money. They don’t require extra time. They don’t require extra work. The require me to give all of me to Him.

Be blessed – Cherie