Too much success

He had all the trappings of 21st century, American success.

He was a master builder — massive revitalization projects produced much income and resources for a struggling city.  He was a motivating leader — thousands of men served underneath him and gladly followed him.  He was a successful soldier — he led his nation out from under oppression with what had to be considered surprising victories — he was evidently something of a Patton and MacArthur combined into one dominating leader.  And he was also a visionary businessman, creating large and prosperous agrarian projects.

In a word, he was strong.

And that was King Uzziah’s ultimate downfall.

But when he became strong, his heart was so proud that he acted corruptly, and he was unfaithful to the LORD his God… (2 Chron. 26:16a; NASB)

Here is one caution to success — as with Uzziah, it offers the temptation to cultivate pride.

The manifestation of that pride may be various — for Uzziah, it resulted in going into the temple to make an offering himself, apart from the priest.  And his pride also produced a hardened conscience that responded to the revelation of his sin with anger instead of humble confession.

Yet the root of pride is always the same.  It is an exaltation of self to the exclusion of God.  The sin of pride is often defined only as self-exaltation.  That is true.  Pride honors the accomplishments of self.  Pride offers the strength of self as the reason for success.  Pride ignores the participation and help of others in successful ventures (and often blames the participation and help of others in unsuccessful ventures).  But that’s only part of why pride is sin.

Pride is sin because primarily the prideful person fails to acknowledge the provision of God in the success.  This was Uzziah’s sin.  He was unfaithful to God.  Certainly that fundamentally meant that he was unfaithful in his foolish attempt to make an offering.

But his unfaithfulness also implies that Uzziah had risen in such stature in his own mind that God and God’s Law was no longer necessary and binding for him. He believed that his success was due to his own accomplishments; God was a trivial accessory to his achievement.  In pride, he excluded God from the equation of his life.  His pride (and ours too) led Uzziah to trust himself and inhibited him from trusting God.  That’s the essence of why pride is such a tragic sin — it is a failure to depend and rely on the one on whom all men are dependent — God Himself.

For all Uzziah’s success, what a tragedy ensued.  The contemporary man might look at the accoutrements of his life and be envious.  King at 16.  Wealthy.  Powerful.  But all the “success” culminated in him forgetting God whom he served.  Self now sat on the throne of his heart and God was excused from the throne room, excluded from the kingdom of Uzziah’s life.

Uzziah’s life began so well — “He did right in the sight of the Lord according to all that his father Amaziah had done” (26:4).  And he ended so poorly — leprous (26:19-23) and bearing the epitaph, “he was unfaithful to the Lord” (26:16).

Here is a contemporary tale of one temptation that comes from success.  [Aside:  you don’t have to be a king to be successful — the same temptation arises when one receives a small promotion at the local department store chain.]  Let the reader beware of exalting self and excluding God.