This will be a three or four week series on how to get through the difficult crisis thst appear in every christian,s life from time to time. We will be exploring the life and times of King Hezekiah

***II Kings 18:1-7A

The life of Hezekiah teaches us two great lessons;
#1.That we all face moments of crisis, no one is exempted. Even the great men and women of God in the bible went through times of crisis in their lives.
#2.What we do in our own moments of crisis determines our victory. The choices that we make do have an impact in our lives, sometimes positive and other times negative. What determines the positive or negative is if we choose to obey God or not.
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A LITTLE HISTORY ABOUT HEZEKIAH AND THE TIMES IN WHICH HE LIVED;

1. Hezekiah means Jehovah is strength or the Lord is my strength. His name like others in the Bible says a lot about his character. Hezekiah relied on the Lord's strengh and not His own to accomplish everything he did.

2. He was the 13th king of Juda

3. He was twenty five years old when he began his reign. Very often God uses young people to correct the evil of the older generations. HE USED DAVID, HE
USED JOSEPH, AND HERE HE USED HEZEKIAH TO CORRECT THE EVIL THAT HIS FATHER HAD DONE.

4. He reigned twenty nine years. It's believed that at least twelve of those years he reigned together with his father Ahaz.
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#1) (verse 3)"HE DID THAT WHICH WAS GOOD IN THE SIGHT OF THE lORD, ACCORDING TO ALL WHICH DAVID HIS FOREFATHER DID".

He did a lot to clean out the mess that his father Ahaz had created. Ahaz was an aweful king in the sight of God;

* he sinned against The Lord.
* he made molten images of Baal and erected an altar to the Caananite goddess of fertility Ashera. Through the kingdom of Ahaz the Southern kingdom got deeper and deeper into idolatry. It was believed that Ashera was the mother of the gods and a force of life and nature. Her name was invoked during childbirth, planting, and also over the livestock to produce strong animals.
Baal was the supreme diety of the Cananites and other pagan nations. He was believed to be the sun god and the lord of heaven. Elijah got into a dispute between the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah and destroyed them all after God rained fire from heaven(I Kings 18:17-40).
* Ahaz also closed the temple doors and the people could not go in to worship the real God(Jehovah).
* He cut into pieces the vessels of the house of God.
* He encouraged the people to worship the brazen serpent that Moses put up in the desert under the instructions of God. What was once a blessing he turned it into a curse by worshiping the creation instead of the Creator.


#2) Hezekiah chose to undo all the evil that his father had done and he immitated David his forefather instead of following in his fathers footsteps.

* In many people's view he had a good excuse to be a loser because his father was a loser. But we learn here that we have the power to choose what we want to become. Some people use these excuses to justify their own shortcomings.


#3) (verse 4)"HE REMOVED THE HIGH PLACES, AND BROKE THE IMAGES, AND CUT DOWN THE GROVES, AND BROKE INTO PIECES THE BRAZEN SERPENT THAT MOSES HAD MADE".

* When going through a crisis you have to be sure to cover all the bases.

* Clean house.

* Change the atmosphere.

* Get rid of everything that is keeping you back.