In Second Chronicles, chapter thirty, verse eight, Hezekiah emphasizes four truths concerning genuine repentance. God’s people must turn to Him with the desire to forsake sin and confess Him as Lord if they want to experience His favor, as in verses six through eight. God will not return and bless His people while they pleasure in sin, as in Hosea five, verses five and fourteen.
God’s people must turn to Him to obey His commands. Unless God’s people forsake the world’s sinful ways and pursue purity of heart and obedience to His word, God will bring calamity and destruction upon them.
God’s people must turn to Him in submission, worship, and service to escape His burning anger toward sin. The words “yield yourselves unto the Lord” are literally “to give the hand to the Lord.” The hand is a pledge of absolute loyalty and fidelity to God and His righteous ways., as in Second Kings ten, verse fifteen, Ezra ten, verse nineteen, and Ezekiel seventeen, verse eighteen.
God’s people must turn to Him with supplication and prayer to experience His grace, joy, and compassion.
What often stops a person from coming out of darkness into the marvelous light of God is because they are stiffnecked. Hezekiah sends letters to Israel and Judah that they should come to Jerusalem to keep the Passover. However, he warns them not to be stiffnecked like their fathers. Nine times, “stiffnecked” is used in the Bible to demonstrate the hardness of the hearts of leaders. The first time stiffnecked is in Exodus twenty-nine, verse two of the Old Testament.
God tells Moses for the first time during a conversation with Moses, “And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people.”
Submit yourselves to him by obeying his command, and renew your covenant with him: of both which, things were wont to be done among men, by the ceremony of giving the hand and enter into his sanctuary.