Hezekiah, the Praying King, Monday

0:00Hello friends, welcome to the scene pod for kids. Thank you for joining me today, as we spend time with our friend Jesus. Spending time with Jesus is the best way to start your day. Let's begin our time together, praising Him. Have you ever seen a fountain? My parents put a fountain in their backyard. The water is pumped up and bubbles out, spills down into the small pond below the fountain, and then gets pumped back up, and it starts all over again. It's a constant flow of water. They get all kinds of wildlife coming to the fountain for a drink of water. They have seen a fox, skunk, deer, turkeys, and small birds. The fountain is a blessing to all those animals. That is what Jesus does for us. He gives us blessings that never end.

1:27To adore thee, they all still are goodness-proof. All the love and the story is not hard with joy and love. Don't you grace, have a doubt at her. Daily all I've come straight to be. Let by goodness like a fatter, find me closer and stand to thee. Brought to wonder, Lord, I feel it. Brought to live on our home. Here's my heart, I'll take and seal it. Seal it for thy points out of. God is merciful and God is gracious. That's what we talked about last time.

2:29Well, now we're going to learn about a new king, a new king. But first, let's bow our heads and pray. Dear Lord, be with us as we study from your word, that you will help us to see, to understand, to hear what you want us to know today. In Jesus' name, amen. After King Solomon died, Israel became two kingdoms. Not one, like they were before, but two kingdoms. The northern kingdom was called Israel, and the southern kingdom was called Judah. The first king of the northern kingdom was Jeroboam. And because he was afraid that the people would go back to join Judah, if they went to Jerusalem to worship God, he decided he was going to do something to keep them from going back and worshiping God. Because the more that they're in Jerusalem worshiping God, maybe they'll just kind of want to stay there, or maybe they'll just kind of want that king to rule over them.

3:31Oh, that's not good. Let's keep them here. Let's keep them in our own country. So he made two gold calves in his kingdom for people to worship there. Oh, it doesn't sound like a good idea, does it? No, and from then on, most of the people in the northern kingdom worshiped idols. Oh, really? Oh, that's terrible. They copied the heathen nations, living all around them, and they were doing everything like the other heathens around them. That's not good. But you know what? God never stopped trying to help his people. He didn't. He sent profit after profit. Some people chose to obey and to trust him, no matter what the rest did. But most of them didn't obey. Here's a verse that we find many times, many, many times, as we read the stories about the kings of the northern kingdom,

4:31those ten tribes in the north. Let's go to second kings, chapter 14, verse 24. That's a mouthful, isn't it? Well, let's start with second kings. So we're going to turn in our Bibles to second kings. It's an Old Testament. You have Joshua Judges Ruth, first and second Samuel, and then first and second kings. So I mean first kings. Here we go, second kings. All right, second kings. And then we're going to verse chapter, chapter chapter, not verse. Chapter 14, so I got to go back a little bit. Chapter 14 and then verse 24. Here's what this says. And there were also perverted persons in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel.

5:31It says that they did evil on the side of the Lord. And you're going to see that over and over as kings come and as kings go. In the southern kingdom of Judah, little King Joe Ash started out making really good decisions. Remember, he collected money to be able to clean up the temple and to make the repairs that were needed. And he called people to come. He had the scroll, the law, so that he could read about what God's rules were. He could follow those and find happiness and true joy. And so he started out really well. But after his uncle, Joheita died, he chose to listen to the wrong people. And the end of his story was very, very sad. After Joe Ash was there on the throne, there were other kings that followed him. And they would start out well too. They would do really, really good. But then they changed, just like Joe Ash did. Finally, however, there was a king who came to the throne

6:33and stayed loyal to God, even though he made some mistakes. He was still loyal to God from beginning to end. Do you know what his name was? It's actually a name that sounds like a book of the Bible. I've heard a Bible trivia question that asked if this king's name was a book of the Bible. His name was Hezekiah. Doesn't Hezekiah sound like it could be a book in the Bible? What were some of the first things that Hezekiah did? We're going to go to 2nd Chronicles. So we're going to turn in our Bibles. Let's see, oops, I have a pen in my Bible. It's in the wrong place. Let's go to 2nd Chronicles. So we were in 2nd Kings. Now we're going to go 1st Chronicles and then 2nd Chronicles. So it's right after 1st 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles. So 2nd Chronicles 29. And then verse 1,

7:342, 3, 4, and 5. We're going to see what Hezekiah did as he came, or right after, he came to the throne. Hezekiah became king when he was 25 years old. And he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abysia, the daughter of Zechariah. And he did what was right in the side of the Lord. According to all that his father, David, had done. In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. Then he brought in the priests and the Levites and gathered them in the east square and said to them, Hear me, Levites, now sanctify yourselves, sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers and carry out the rubbish from the holy place.

8:34Isn't that wonderful? He helped them to turn to God, to sanctify the house of the Lord, to clean up the temple, and to prepare to worship God. That sounds like a good start, doesn't it? Have you ever been on a hike? I was thinking about this story and about how sometimes people start out really well and sometimes they don't end so well. But there's others who do really, really well. That's because they follow the path. We've been on hikes before, where we start out, we're all, oh, we have the energy and we're all ready to go and we're hiking along, hike, hike, hike, and then we're like, okay, now it's time to turn around and go back and instead of following the trail, we're like, well, that would take a lot longer. Why don't we just cut through? We can just cut across and then we'll be fine. It doesn't usually turn out fine. You get lost and turned around and finally when you get back,

9:35it was a lot of work to get back. I think of that, like the kings of Judah, the kings of Israel. Some of them started out really well. They were following God. They were loving God. But then along the way, they made some choices. They made some decisions that ended up leaving them in a place where they did not want to be. Is making good choices at the beginning enough? Is it enough just to say, oh, well, I made a good choice a while ago? Yeah, I'm not making good ones now, but that's all right. No, that's not how it works. What else do we need to do? We need to make good choices all along. We need to follow the path all along. If there's a loop in the trail, you follow that loop until you get back to the parking area. Make choices to stay on the path. That is what keeps us safe. That is what gets us there, the quickest, and that is what brings us happiness. The choices that we make,

10:36as we follow God, we want to choose to keep following Him and keep making good choices so that we can stay on the trail and stay close to Him. Let's pray. Lord, as we continue learning about has a kind of this week. I just pray that You'll help us to make good choices. And even when we mess up or do something that's wrong, help us to confess and to turn to You and repent and that You will give us forgiveness. Thank You, Lord. Amen. Proverbs 29.25.

11:42Start with Jesus is the most important thing you can do for your child. Reading, praying, and sharing the wonderful stories in the Bible will help them to learn more as they grow, not only physically, but also spiritually. But what about us? Busy adults. Sometimes it's hard to spend time with Jesus ourselves when life is so busy. But in order to be the best teachers for our kids, we need to prioritize our own spiritual needs. Starting with Jesus has a devotional series for parents called Renew that goes right along with the lessons that your kids listen to. But it's geared for adults. Check it out on our website, startingwithjesus.com slash Renew. That's startingwithjesus.com slash Renew. If you have enjoyed this program

12:43and would like to find others like it, go to startingwithjesus.com. The materials for this devotional podcast are used by permission from my Bible First. Visit their website at mybiblefirst.org to get your own copy. For more information about this episode, check out the description box below.