"In the first month of the first year of his reign, he opened the doors of the temple of the Lord and repaired them." (2 Chronicles 29:3) The temple had not been abandoned during his father's reign but idolatrous objects had been placed in it. Ahaz had seen a pagan altar in Damascus that struck his fancy and he ordered a replica to be made of it in Judah and placed in the temple. He also rearranged some of the objects of the temple to mimic the layout of pagan temples and he cut the panels off the movable stands in the temple for reasons that were not explained to us. I am not certain what damage he had done to the doors or whether the damage mentioned in verse 3 occurred during the reign of a prior king.
Hezekiah calls the religious leaders together. "He brought in the priests and the Levites, assembled them in the square on the east side and said: 'Listen to me, Levites! Consecrate yourselves now and consecrate the temple of the Lord, the God of your ancestors. Remove all defilement from the sanctuary.'" (2 Chronicles 29:4-5) He is "cleaning house", both literally (by removing unholy objects) and spiritually (by pointing the priests and Levites back to the true worship of the Lord).
He continues, "Our parents were unfaithful; they did evil in the eyes of the Lord our God and forsook Him. They turned their faces away from the Lord's dwelling place and turned their backs on Him." (2 Chronicles 29:6) It wasn't only his father Ahaz who was unfaithful to the Lord, for he uses the expression "our parents". Ahaz enthusiastically embraced every form of idolatry he ever heard of, as far as we can tell, but many of these other men's parents did the same. It wasn't a situation where only the king went astray and the people remained faithful. Hezekiah was raised in an idolatrous household and so were many of the men he is addressing in today's text.
This brings me to a point I'd like to make concerning the text we are studying today: these men's upbringing is no excuse for continuing to remain unfaithful to the Lord. They are not living in a nation where they have never heard of the Lord. They are not living in a nation where the word of God is not available to them. They can't sit back and say, "Well, this is how I was raised. I grew up in a home that had a number of household idols in it. I grew up watching my parents making offerings on the altars of gods of other nations. You can't expect me to have the faith to put all my eggs in one basket and trust only in the God of Israel." If Hezekiah can reject the gods of his father and place all his faith in the Lord, so can they. If anybody has an excuse for not being able to break out of the mold, it's him, because he was raised by one of the most wicked men in the Bible. But he's a grown man capable of making his own decisions and he has made a decision for the Lord. He's asking them to do the same. If they refuse, they can blame no one but themselves because it's not as if they don't have enough knowledge of the Lord to choose Him and to forsake the false deities of foreign lands.
Someone who is around my same age (early 50s) said to me the other day: "I come from a long line of alcoholics and gamblers. That's why I'm the way I am. I can't help it." But that's simply not true! We don't have to make the same mistakes that our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents made. I'm not saying we can't be traumatized by generational sin and I'm not saying patterns can't develop because of generational sin. What I'm saying is that we don't have to keep perpetuating generational sin. There are characters in my own family tree who committed some extremely shameful acts but the worst thing my relatives and I could do would be to be just like them. Hezekiah has decided he will not perpetuate generational sin. He doesn't want that for himself, for his family, or for any family in Judah. He and the people of Judah know about the God of Israel and they have His laws and commandments available to them. This means they have the necessary tools for breaking the bonds of generational sin and for making a brighter future for themselves and for their children.
In tomorrow's study he will lay out his plans for turning around the spiritual situation in Judah.
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