I’ve been thinking lately about the way we remember our leaders for one or two main things, even though they were complex people who had many achievements.

George Washington is frozen in many of our minds as the person who chopped down the cherry tree.

Abraham Lincoln presided over the Civil War and spoke the Gettysburg Address.

Teddy Roosevelt was a big game hunter in Africa.

All of these people have volumes of books written about them, yet we so easily remember just one thing about them.

The same is true of Hezekiah, king in Jerusalem around 700 BC. If you visit Jerusalem today and mention Hezekiah, you’ll immediately hear “Hezekiah’s tunnel.”

Hezekiah reigned as king in a time of great political unrest with frequent military action, and he decided to protect the water source for Jerusalem. A spring was outside the city walls, and he set people to work digging a tunnel through solid rock for 1,777 feet to bring the water inside the city walls. The tunnel is still there today and tourists can wade through it.

Hezekiah actually has many chapters devoted to him, much more than most other kings. He was a very interesting person, one of the “good kings” of Israel. We get one snapshot of Hezekiah in Isaiah 38. In this passage, Isaiah has announced to him that his time to die has come. Hezekiah pleads with God for more years, and God grants him his request.

This is a passage that raises lots of questions.

Why would God give him such a strange sign, turning back a shadow on the sundial?

Does that mean God stopped the earth’s rotation so the sun could move backwards?

It’s sort of like the time God made the sun stand still. We don’t know how it happened, but if God made the universe, surely this is something he can do.

Hezekiah’s prayer raises other questions.

Why did God grant Hezekiah’s request to live longer when there are so many prayers God doesn’t answer?

And what do we make of the fact that Hezekiah says he served God with his whole heart? Isn’t that an arrogant statement for someone to make?

I can’t answer most of these questions. I don’t know how or why God made the shadow on the sundial move backwards. I don’t know why God answers some prayers and not others. I don’t know, in that culture, whether or not it was arrogant to say, “I have served you with my whole heart.”

But this characteristic of Hezekiah, serving God with a whole heart, is mentioned elsewhere in the narratives about Hezekiah. I want to look at Hezekiah’s life, asking the questions,

What does it look like to serve God with a whole heart?

What can we learn from Hezekiah’s heart for God?

When Hezekiah took the throne, the nation of Judah was really just a vassal state to Assyria. Hezekiah wanted to get free from the yoke of Assyria, so he looked into making treaties with other countries to stand up to Assyria. Several times Isaiah had to confront him about trusting in alliances and military might rather than trusting in God. Most of the time Hezekiah responded in obedience to God’s word through Isaiah.

When Hezekiah began to reign, the people of Judah had adopted all sorts of religious practices based on the religions of the people around them. They had also taken on some of the gods of the Assyrians. Hezekiah decided to clean things up.

He got a group of men together and asked them to clean up the temple, to remove anything that encouraged people to worship other gods. It took this group of men two weeks to clean up the temple, but they got it done. Hezekiah ordered that one item in the temple be destroyed, the bronze serpent said to date from Moses’ time. This was a huge step of commitment to worship one God only.

Hezekiah also had other idols torn down, idols to Asherah, a Caananite god. You’ll see these idols called “sacred poles” or “Asherah poles” or “sacred groves” in various translations. He also re-instituted the Passover, which hadn’t been celebrated for many years.

One of the most vivid stories in Hezekiah’s life comes from a time that the Assyrian army had conquered most of the cities around Jerusalem, and they were camped right at the edge of Jerusalem, ready to take the city by force. One of the Assyrian commanders sent Hezekiah a letter demanding that he surrender. Hezekiah took the letter into the Temple, laid it before God, and prayed a most amazing prayer. Let me read some of it for you:

Isaiah 37:16-20

God answers Hezekiah and says not to worry. That night thousands of Assyrian soldiers died, and the whole army went back to Assyria.

It’s interesting to look back to the years before Hezekiah’s reign to see the contrast here. His father, Ahaz, was a bad king who worshipped in the sacred groves himself. His grandfather and great-grandfather, Uziah and Jotham, were said to be good kings. They worshipped the one God. But they did not tear down the sacred groves or clean the idols out of the temple. Hezekiah, the Bible says, was one of the best kings, and it seems to be connected to this desire to do everything he could to help the people worship the one true God.

When Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness, the devil promises to give him kingdoms and power and authority if Jesus will worship him. Jesus answers the devil,

“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him” (Luke 3:8).

I believe the key to Hezekiah’s relationship with God is exactly that:

“Serve only him.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that we literally cannot serve two masters. We will always favor one of them. We are made in such a way that we are only capable of serving one God. Whenever we try to serve God and something else, we will be pulled astray from the one true God.

Hezekiah’s life gives us some keys to how this works.

Dan talked last week about the fact that we all need people in our lives who will tell us the truth, and we need to seek out those people and listen to them. Hezekiah listened to Isaiah when Isaiah confronted him about things he was doing wrong. Hezekiah was open to correction.

We receive correction from lots of places:

• from friends who confront us,
• from reading the Bible,
• from the Holy Spirit working in our conscience,
• even sometimes from things other people say about their own lives that apply to us.

The first lesson from Hezekiah is this:

Am I open to God’s correction?

Am I open to changing my plans, my ideas, because God speaks to me?

A person who wants to serve God wholeheartedly will watch for God’s guidance to change what we have planned.

Secondly, Hezekiah tore down the places where people worshipped idols and cleaned out the temple of idols. We are so often just like those Israelite people. We worship God, but we hold onto other things as well. We so easily fall into a kind of view that I call “God AND . . .”

• We look to God and money for security.
• We look to God and possessions for joy.
• We look for our identity in God and work.
• Or God and what people think of us.
• Or God and our spouse or children.

It could be health, fitness, appearance, pornography, whatever that we serve along with God. We may be interested in both Jesus and New Age religious practices. God and something else.

Jesus’ words come back to us:

Worship the Lord your God and serve only him. You cannot serve two masters. It just won’t work.

Hezekiah understood that and was willing to act on what he understood.

Sometimes God, in his severe mercy, strips away the thing we are trying to worship along with him. Maybe we lose our job or someone we love dies. In my own life, God has spoken to me over and over, showing me where I am trying to worship something along with God.

For several years I was obsessed about finding a husband and getting married. God spoke to me and called me to let go of that obsession and trust him in a new way. I have had periods of time where money has been far too important in my life, and God has continually drawn me back to worship only him. Sometimes I get lured by possessions, and God has to help me return to only him. I can easily fall into a kind of self-loathing which becomes obsessive, a kind of bizarre obsession that eclipses my love for God and makes me unable to receive God’s love. Over and over, God has called me back from that.

Some of us, I know, will experience a major turning away from something that we have worshipped alongside the one true God. For me, there have been many small turnings over the course of my walk with God.

Either way, to follow Hezekiah’s model, we have to be willing to clear out the temple of our heart. We have to be willing to tear down the places we worship other gods.

The quality of Hezekiah’s prayer life can also teach us something about serving God with a whole heart. When he got the letter from the general who was about to invade Jerusalem, he didn’t run to his own generals first and get advice. He didn’t scheme and plan first. The first thing he did was take the letter up to the temple and pray over it.

What a great model for all of us. When we have rats in our basement or trouble with our taxes, God invites us, first of all, to bring our problems to him and lay them before him in prayer.

Hezekiah’s bold prayer that God would extend his life also indicates something about the quality of his relationship with God.

I find it hard to pray that boldly. I can remember during our first Alpha course about three years ago, I was setting tables in the fellowship hall when our cook, John Compatore, poured boiling water on his arm by accident. Esther Kitui was helping in the kitchen, and Esther and I prayed for John.

I was praying along the lines of

“Lord, please help John’s arm not to hurt too much.”

Esther prayed boldly for John’s complete healing. Later in the evening, John’s arm was red but there was no pain at all. I was convicted then, and I continue to notice how hard it is for me to pray boldly for what would be the very best in a situation.

Being able to pray for the very best, for what we truly want, comes from years of putting God first. Hezekiah did that, by listening to God’s word to him through Isaiah, by tearing down and cleaning out the idols that lead people astray from God.

“You cannot serve two masters,” Jesus says. “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”

Let us walk before God in faithfulness with a whole heart.