From King to Quarantined

In a book that I am reading the author did a character study on King Uzziah. He was the King of Judah 3000 years ago and his reign is covered in 2 Chronicles. While I have read about him before, I had never really studied his life. I found some interesting and applicable things about his life and thought that I’d share them this week.

After King Solomon died, the nation of Israel basically had a civil war like we did in America in the 1800’s and they ended up splitting into a northern kingdom (Israel) and a southern kingdom (Judah.) Uzziah was the 10th king of Judah so this gives some perspective on the time line of his life. He became King at 16 and ruled for 52 years. This is what is initially said about him:

 2 Chronicles 26: 4-5 He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father Amaziah had done. He sought God during the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God. As long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success.

Uzziah was very successful as king as long as he sought God’s guidance. He learned well from his father and then was able to apply that leadership during his reign. He had great military victories and was a visionary who was able to oversee major construction projects in both Jerusalem and his conquered cities. As the passage says above, he was teachable, feared the Lord and God blessed all of his efforts.

However, success sometimes comes at a price and it does so for Uzziah.

2 Chronicles 26: 15-16 …His fame spread far and wide, for he was greatly helped until he became powerful. But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God, 

Pride creeped into Uzziah’s life with all of the success and power that he had and it became his downfall. The culmination of his fall occurred when he decided to go into the temple and burn incense at the altar - a task solely reserved for priests per Old Testament law. He considered himself above this and even as he was still in the temple, he broke out with leprosy and had to live the rest of his life in quarantine (a lot worse that just a couple of months like us, ha.)

There were specific reasons for Uzziah’s fall that we can all take to heart. The first would be the at some point he began to prioritize the “external over the eternal.” While there wasn’t anything wrong with the great military and building success that he was having, at some point his successes began to own him. He started drinking his own Kool Aid and he must have forgotten who was enabling him to achieve all of these things.

Secondly, his character did not keep up with his accomplishments. This can come in any of our lives as the result of a failure to continue to work on our own Christian character. Pursuing Christlikeness is a lifetime pursuit and we must never stop in that effort. We should never be content in our present level of sanctification (righteousness.) It can be easy to slip in this area if we use the world as our standard - relativism. It’s not hard to point to others shortcoming to make us feel good about ourselves. But, the truth is that our standard for righteousness is not the world but Jesus. His life is our model and it’s hard to be prideful if we re comparing our righteousness to his.

Stay healthy, humble & hungry,

Big E