Hezekiah’s Reform: Restoring the Essence of Faith

Hezekiah becomes king amid a temple defiled by Ahaz and a faith mixed with other worship. As soon as he took the throne, the first thing he did was cleanse the temple. He tore down the high places that had taken root deep in the people’s lives, and he even broke in pieces the bronze serpent of Moses that the people had been worshiping, calling it Nehushtan.

The high places were not places where God had been abandoned but places where God was set alongside other things. The bronze serpent was originally God’s grace, but it became an idol when people came to worship the thing itself instead of God, its true reality. Even something God has given, if it comes before God in the heart, becomes a bronze serpent that must be broken.

The starting point of faith is whether one is upright by God’s standard. Hezekiah relied on God alone and kept his commands, and as a result he could stand boldly even before Assyria. Treating God as God: that is the essence of faith.