Here I Am, Day 3 — Repentance: What Are You Carrying? (Josiah and Hezekiah)

Here I Am · Study 3 of 5 · Repentance

In the last study Isaiah saw God’s holiness and then saw himself. Being honest about sin is necessary, but if you stay there it turns into shame. Something has to move. That movement is repentance: not just feeling bad, but turning around and coming back. This study asks one question: what are you carrying? We’ll follow two kings, Josiah and his great-grandfather Hezekiah, and learn five simple steps you can use for the rest of your life. Like every study in this series, it has three sections:

• 📖 Study: walk through the passages phrase by phrase: what the words mean, the world behind them, and the truth underneath.
• ✍️ Journal: a quiet heart check, with room to write.
• 🛠️ Practice: how to repent together with a friend, and small steps for the week.

Have a Bible, a pen and something to write in. It helps to read 2 Kings 22–23 and 2 Chronicles 30 beforehand, but you don’t have to.

🗺️ Where this study fits

Isaiah 6 is one encounter with God that changes a man in five moves. Each study takes one of them.

See God. See yourself. Confess. Be cleansed. Say yes. This study is the hinge: what you do once you’ve seen the truth about yourself.

📱 The picture: what are you carrying?

All through this series, your phone is a picture of your heart: the control center where your choices get made (Proverbs 4:23). Today we look at its 💾 storage.

You know the moment. You’re trying to record something that matters, and the phone says Storage Full. Something has to go. You don’t delete what you love. You delete what is taking up the space.

Here is why the picture fits. Paul says your body isn’t a storage unit. It belongs to Someone:

📜 Start where Isaiah stopped

⁵ Then I [Isaiah] said: “Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips dwelling among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts.”

Isaiah 6:5 (Berean Standard Bible)

Isaiah doesn’t explain, compare or defend. He names the specific thing: his lips, the very part of him that would carry God’s word. Real confession is specific. The question is what comes next.

🔄 Step 1 · What “repent” actually means

The New Testament word is metanoia: literally, a change of mind. But in the Bible a changed mind always means a changed direction. The Old Testament word, shuv, is simpler still: “turn” or “return.” Repentance isn’t mainly a feeling. It’s a U-turn.

The Bible holds two things together. Repentance is something God commands, and it’s something God gives: “So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life” (Acts 11:18), and “God’s kindness leads you to repentance” (Romans 2:4). You can’t produce it on your own, and you still have to actually turn.

🔄 Step 2 · Forsake, return, pardoned

This one verse is the whole picture. Forsake his own way is the delete: turning from the thing. Return to the LORD is the turn toward Someone. He will freely pardon is God removing the sin, and “freely” means you don’t earn it.

🤲 Step 3 · The one God esteems

² “…This is the one I will esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at My word.”

Isaiah 66:2 (Berean Standard Bible)

Notice what God esteems. Not the impressive or the successful, but the person who is humble, broken over sin, and takes what God says seriously. That’s the fear of the Lord from the first study, now turned toward our own wrongs.

👦 Josiah: a boy king in a dark city

Before we read Josiah’s story, picture where he started. His great-grandfather Hezekiah had brought the nation back to God. Then his grandfather Manasseh undid almost all of it: “he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed, and he raised up altars for Baal” and “built altars in the house of the LORD” (2 Kings 21:3–4). His father Amon “abandoned the LORD” and was killed by his own servants after two years (2 Kings 21:22–23). Then “they made his son Josiah king in his place” (2 Kings 21:24).

📖 Step 4 · The Book was found

⁸ Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the LORD!” … ¹¹ When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes…

2 Kings 22:8, 11 (Berean Standard Bible)

Think about that picture. God’s Word had been lost inside God’s own house: storage in the worst sense, the most important thing buried under everything else. When it was read aloud, the king didn’t debate it. He tore his clothes, the way people in that world showed grief. The Word read him before he read it.

💧 Step 5 · “Your heart was tender”

Josiah sent men to “inquire of the LORD” (2 Kings 22:13). The answer came through the prophetess Huldah, with this word for the king himself:

¹⁹ [the LORD said,] “…your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard what I spoke … and because you have torn your clothes and wept before Me, I have heard you,” declares the LORD.

2 Kings 22:19 (Berean Standard Bible)

A tender heart is the opposite of a hardened one. “But exhort one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (Hebrews 3:13). The danger isn’t one big sin. It’s postponing: each delay makes the next turn harder. God answers tenderness with “I have heard you.”

🧹 Step 6 · Then he cleared the temple

Feeling sorry wasn’t the end for Josiah. The sorrow turned into action: he carried the idols out. John the Baptist called this “fruit in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8). Notice the order. The Word was found, the heart was softened, then the clearing happened. Josiah didn’t clear the temple to earn God’s attention. He cleared it because God’s Word had already reached him.

📢 Step 7 · The whole kingdom heard it

² …in their hearing he read all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the LORD. ³ So the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the LORD to follow the LORD… with all his heart and all his soul… And all the people entered into the covenant.

2 Kings 23:2–3 (Berean Standard Bible)

Josiah didn’t keep his repentance private. He read the Book to everyone, “small and great,” and the people joined him. One person’s honest turn opened the door for a whole nation.

🔥 Step 8 · Turned with all his heart

“Turned” is the repentance word, shuv. But read the next verse honestly: “Nevertheless, the LORD did not turn away from the fury of His burning anger, which was kindled against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done” (2 Kings 23:26). Josiah’s turning was real, and it didn’t fix everything. A king could clear the idols out of the building. He couldn’t make his people clean inside. That needs something only God can give, and the next study shows it: a coal from the altar.

🪪 Old name → new name

¹ Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are!

1 John 3:1 (Berean Standard Bible)

Some of what we carry isn’t a thing we did. It’s a name we answer to. Repentance includes turning from an old name and agreeing with the name God gives. You don’t make the new name by trying harder. You receive it.

🛤️ How to repent: SEE · SAY · RECEIVE · REPLACE · SHARE

Josiah’s story gives us five simple steps. They work for big things and small things, today and for the rest of your life. Take one real example, like the old name “Failure,” and walk it through.

Notice who does what. You see, you say, you replace, you share. God does the cleaning. “Faithful and just” means God forgiving a confessing person isn’t Him bending the rules. It’s Him keeping His word, because “the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

✉️ How a people comes back: Hezekiah

About ninety years before Josiah found the Book, his great-grandfather Hezekiah faced the same darkness. Hezekiah grew up in it. His father, King Ahaz, “burned incense in the Valley of Hinnom and sacrificed his sons in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations” (2 Chronicles 28:3), the very thing God had forbidden (Leviticus 18:21). Yet when Hezekiah became king at twenty-five, “he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD” (2 Kings 18:3). “In the first month of the first year of his reign, Hezekiah opened and repaired the doors of the house of the LORD” (2 Chronicles 29:3). His past was real. It wasn’t his name.

✉️ Step 9 · “Return to the LORD”

⁶ So the couriers went throughout Israel and Judah with letters from the king … “Children of Israel, return to the LORD…” ⁹ “…For the LORD your God is gracious and merciful; He will not turn His face away from you if you return to Him.”

2 Chronicles 30:6, 9 (Berean Standard Bible)

The invitation rests on God’s character, “gracious and merciful,” not on how good the returning people are. And it promises something remarkable: He will not turn His face away. The same promise is in Joel: “So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the LORD your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion” (Joel 2:13).

😤 Step 10 · Nevertheless

Not everyone came. Many laughed. Delay and scorn are real ways of refusing: “Seek the LORD while He may be found” is urgent for a reason (Isaiah 55:6). But look at the word “nevertheless.” Some humbled themselves and came. Coming back doesn’t require a crowd, a feeling or perfect timing. It requires humbling yourself and going.

🙏 Step 11 · Hezekiah prayed

¹⁸ A large number of the people … had not purified themselves, yet they ate the Passover … But Hezekiah interceded for them, saying, “May the LORD, who is good, provide atonement for everyone ¹⁹ who sets his heart on seeking God… even if he is not cleansed according to the purification rules of the sanctuary.” ²⁰ And the LORD heard Hezekiah and healed the people.

2 Chronicles 30:18–20 (Berean Standard Bible)

This is the surprise in the story. The people came uncleansed. They didn’t clean up first. Hezekiah asked God to provide the atonement, and God heard him. The cleansing didn’t come from the people’s readiness. It came from God providing it. That points straight to Jesus, and it’s the question Isaiah 6 leaves hanging: how does a ruined man get cleansed? The next study answers it.

🧭 Seeing your own heart

😢 Step 12 · Two kinds of sorrow

¹⁰ Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.

2 Corinthians 7:10 (Berean Standard Bible)

Two people can feel equally bad. Worldly sorrow is sorry about the consequences: getting caught, losing something, looking bad. It turns inward. Godly sorrow is sorry about the sin itself and what it did to God and others. It turns toward God, and Paul describes its fruit: “what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves… what longing, what zeal” (2 Corinthians 7:11).

⚖️ Step 13 · Conviction or condemnation?

Jesus said the Holy Spirit “will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8). Yet Paul says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Both are true, and they feel different:

• 🕊️ Conviction is specific, draws you toward the Father and ends in hope.
• 🌫️ Condemnation is vague, makes you hide and ends in shame.

👀 Step 14 · Spot it

How do you find what needs repenting? Ask the Father, “Show me” (Psalm 139:23–24), and look in four places:

And here is what true repentance sounds like:

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. ²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm 139:23–24 (Berean Standard Bible)

🔄 Step 15 · Same moment, two responses

Say you said something cruel to your roommate.

📱 Step 16 · Small and same day

• 🤥 Lied → “I lied.” Make it right today.
• 📱 Scrolled what I shouldn’t → tell the Father, then a friend.
• 🗣️ Gossiped → go back and say sorry.
• 😤 Snapped → ask forgiveness before bed.

Jesus put it plainly: “First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:24).

🧩 Putting it together

Isaiah shows that seeing God leads to honest confession. Josiah shows what turning looks like when God’s Word reaches you: tears, then action, then a whole community joining in. Hezekiah shows that God invites people back by His mercy, not their readiness, and provides the atonement they can’t. Theologians call this repentance unto life: a turning that God gives and we really do. And both kings show the limit of human reform. Repentance clears the storage. Only God can make the heart clean.

🚫 What these passages don’t say

• They don’t say sorrow alone is repentance. Josiah’s grief led to action.
• They don’t say you have to clean up before coming. Hezekiah’s people came uncleansed.
• They don’t say deleting earns God’s love. You were bought at a price.
• They don’t say your family’s sin is your name. Hezekiah and Josiah both broke the pattern.
• They don’t say repentance is a one-time feeling. It’s a turn you keep making, small and same day.
• They don’t say conviction should make you hide. It invites you home.

📝 Heart check: clear your storage. Do this on your own, somewhere quiet. Write honestly; nobody else needs to read this. If something unsafe comes up, please talk with a pastor, counselor or trusted mature believer.

🤝 Talk and pray together. Repentance isn’t meant to be carried alone (James 5:16). Find one or two people you trust. Share only what is safe, and what is shared stays there.

This week:

• 👂 Let the Word read you. Read 1 John 1:5–9 aloud, slowly, and listen for one thing.
• 🛤️ Use the five steps. Pick one name or lie and walk it through SEE, SAY, RECEIVE, REPLACE, SHARE.
• ⚡ Small and same day. When you blow it this week, make it right before bed.
• 🤝 Tell one person. Not to fix it. To pray with you and check in.
• 🛡️ Keep it safe. If making something right isn’t safe, talk to a pastor, leader or counselor first. Don’t carry something serious alone.

📚 Go deeper

• 2 Kings 21–23 and 2 Chronicles 34–35: Manasseh, Amon and Josiah, from the lost Book to the cleared temple.
• 2 Chronicles 28–31: Ahaz, then Hezekiah’s reforms and the great Passover.
• Psalm 32 and Psalm 51: what it feels like to hide, and what it feels like to confess.
• Ephesians 4:22–25: put off the old self, put on the new, and speak truthfully to your neighbor.
• Luke 15:11–32: the father who runs to the son coming home.
• Isaiah 44:22: “Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.”

🗓️ The five studies

The thread under all five: God is my Father. I am His child. So, be holy as He is holy.

Scripture quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain. Words in [brackets] are added to show who is speaking. Hebrew and Greek notes are simplified. Dates for the kings of Judah are approximate.