He sought God throughout the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God. And as long as he sought the LORD, God gave him success. Sermons
I. THE PROPHETIC PRIVILEGE OF SEEING GOD. It might seem, at first sight, that there would be no degrees in such capacity. If God enabled a man to see him and to know his truth by granting him a vision, or by specially enlarging his natural faculty, it must be of no consequence (or of very little) what his individual capacities may be. But, thus reasoning, we should be wrong. God did not then, as he does not now, grant his Divine enlightenment independent of all human conditions. He had regard to: 1. Purity and sanctity of character. 2. Natural intellectual faculty. 3. Special training. We cannot say that God never revealed his mind to any one who did not possess the first of these qualifications in a high degree. Remembering Balsam and Jonah, it would be impossible to maintain that view. Yet we may be quite sure that such men as Samuel and Elijah were preferred to others because of the elevation of their characters. Nor can we suppose that the second qualification was indispensable; but we may well believe that Balaam was employed as he was partly because he was a man of considerable intellectual endowment, and that Isaiah and Amos were among the "chosen" partly for the same reason. We know that there was special training for the work of prophecy, for there were "schools of the prophets" in the time of the judges. Whether Zechariah had one or all of these three advantages we do not know, but be was a man, on some such grounds, peculiarly adapted to receive communication from God, and, having received them, to deliver them. II. THE FACULTY OF ALL SPIRITUAL MEN. We also, as those who stand among the multitude of godly men undistinguished by any office, may have "understanding in the seeing of God." What are its conditions? 1. Docility of spirit. If we would "enter the kingdom of God," i.e. if we would see God and know him as he desires to be seen and known by us as our forgiving Father, we must "become as little children" (Matthew 18:3; Matthew 19:14). Much "understanding" in the way of human learning may, as in the case of the scribes and lawyers, keep us out of that atmosphere of docility without which we shall not learn of Christ, and shall not know God as we urgently need to know him (see 1 Corinthians 1:26-29). It is the man that has come to understand his own spiritual ignorance and incapacity who will be willing to learn of God, and thus to "have understanding in the seeing of God." 2. Purity of heart. This, we know from the great Teacher himself, is an essential (Matthew 5:8). This purity of which Christ speaks includes: (1) Simplicity and sincerity of spirit; that which is not content with passing through fleshly rites, but desires to know God himself, to come into communion with him, to gain his loving favour. (2) A freedom from degrading affections; and therefore from debasing acts and associations - a heart that is not worn with selfish ambitions, or worried with corroding cares, or blemished by injurious excitements. (3) Consequent elevation of affection and aim - the love of Christ, the love of man, the earnest desire to be of service to our generation. 3. Patient continuance in well-being and in well-doing. To those who thus "continue in the grace of God" will be granted "eternal life"' They who are faithful unto death shall wear "the crown of life" (see Romans 2:7; Revelation 2:10). And we are sure that this life which is consummated beyond includes such a vision of God as we do not now enjoy, even when it is most true that "the eyes of our understanding are opened," and even when we are "blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." Then, with purer heart than we now possess, and with a holiness (Hebrews 12:14) to which we do not now attain, we shall "have understanding [and experience] in the seeing of God." Surely every one that hath this hope in him will "purify himself, even as Christ the Lord is pure." - C.
And as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper. I. THE SEEKERS OF THE LORD.1. Every real seeker of the Lord must be a heaven-born soul (John 3:8). This involves the bestowment of a Divine existence, the creating of a new nature (2 Peter 1:4). This is the nature that habitually seeks after God. 2. Seeking the Lord includes — (1) (2) (3) II. THEIR EXPERIENCE OF PROSPERITY. If you ask a worldling what constitutes prosperity he will say, "Many excellent bargains, good customers, ready money, quick returns, the accumulation of property, health, friends, extended connections, and the like." But what is Christian prosperity? 1. Spiritual growth. 2. Triumphant victories. The life of a Christian is the life of a conqueror. 3. The taking of spoils from the vanquished foe. The most valuable lessons are often learnt from the heaviest calamities. III. THE EXTENSION OF PROSPERITY: "As long as he sought the Lord." (Joseph Irons.) II. THE PERIL OF PROSPERITY, WHICH WAS TOO GREAT A PERIL FOR UZZIAH. His splendid career elated him, and "his heart was lifted up to his destruction." Instead of reverent praise to God for having helped him so marvellously, he began to flatter himself with the thought that his success had been achieved by his own wisdom and skill, and "he transgressed against the Lord, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense." It is easy to find excuses for Uzziah, which are sufficient to protect him from our blame, but not sufficient to reduce the heinousness of his sin in the sight of God. It might, for instance, be said that his old godly counsellor Zechariah had lately died. Or it might be said that he was but imitating the conduct of his father, of Jeroboam, of the idolatrous kings around him. But, whatever our charity may dispose us to urge in palliation, the fact remains that he showed his gratitude to God for the marvellous help he had received by setting at nought the express commandment of God. For when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram were destroyed, their brazen censers were made into broad plates for a covering of the altar "to be a memorial unto the children of Israel" (so runs the law) "that no stranger, which is not of the seed of Aaron, come near to offer incense before the Lord." Nor can Uzziah have forgotten that law. It was, indeed, when he became wrath with the faithful priests who reminded him of it, and pressed forward with his censer, that that moment "the leprosy rose up to his forehead," and, conscience-smitten, he hastened out of the temple. Just think of the contrast which that sin caused between the earlier and the later parts of Uzziah's reign. There is another place in the Old Testament where that warning is embedded in associations of even greater interest than these — the song of Moses in the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy. The marvellous works which God had wrought for Israel are enumerated first. Then follow the ungrateful exaltation of Israel in their own eyes, their desertion of God, and the wrath they thereby brought quickly upon themselves. It is just a type of the process that takes place in many hearts. First of all, God blesses us, enables us to do what otherwise we could not possibly have done, makes us great in control over ourselves, and perhaps, also, in influence over others. We, in some crisis of temptation, listen to the whisper that it was our own hand that made us strong; self-complacency begets presumption; until at last conscience smites us; we know ourselves to be leprous in spirit in the sight of God, and the self-built fabric of prosperity crumbles in a moment. Blessed for us if the Lord gives us what He gave Uzziah — seven quiet years for penitence, thought, and humbler service. It may be well to linger a little upon the different stages of this process, which sometimes leads a godly man from strength to leprosy. Obviously pride was at' the bottom of Uzziah's sin. Uzziah seems to have thought, "Philistines and Ammonites, it's I have defeated them, and my name which they applaud and fear even to the entering in of Egypt. My father left the kingdom circumscribed, so reduced that he had to give hostages to Joash; I have made it great and free." And still whenever by the help of God we have done any useful work, we are liable to a similar temptation, to attribute to ourselves the credit of having done it, and in our self-complacency to forget and to dishonour God. There is nothing but sin, failure, and ruin to be found in yielding to that temptation. For the immediate and necessary consequence of pride is presumption, which, though it may not take the exact form it took in the case of Uzziah, may take an equally sinful form. One form it often assumes now, in the case of men whose real knowledge of God is very defective, is that of patronising the Gospel. But much as that habit of thought requires to be guarded against, it is probably in other directions that most of us are more apt to err. The remembrance of what we have done by the help of God prompts us to attempt what we have to do apart from His help, with confidence in ourselves as sufficient for it, with a neglect of Divine aid as more or less unnecessary and superfluous. Any particle of the pride which leads us to attribute to ourselves the success of the past, whatever the particular form or particular associations of that pride, is a mistake even according to human judgment, an element of weakness which will grievously impede us, and a sin in the sight of God. And, whilst that principle teaches us what is forbidden, it teaches us also what is enjoined. Pride always means folly and failure. And therefore trust in God, the more perfect and supreme the better, means wisdom and success. It was whilst Uzziah "looked unto God" that he was marvellously helped and made strong. And it will be in proportion as we trust in Jehovah that we shall have vigour to finish and patience to bear whatever He gives us to endure or to do. (R. W. Moss.) II. HIS MARVELLOUS PRESUMPTION. "But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction." It requires special grace to keep a man right when he has had a career of unbroken prosperity. One day, when the celebrated George Whitfield was about to commence the service, an intimation was read out from the desk below: "The prayers of the congregation are desired for a young man who has become heir to an immense fortune, and who feels he has much need of grace to keep him humble in the midst of his riches." Nothing tries a man so much as the favour of fortune and the flattery of the world. III. THE NOTE OF WARNING. As there are many kinds of prosperity, so there are many kinds of presumption. A man may be "lifted up to his destruction," for example — 1. By the pride of money. It does not take a large fortune to make some people "purse-proud " — and very disagreeable people these are. 2. The pride of intellect. I wish to put you on your guard against a current which is running very strong in our day. I mean the tendency to set up the reason against religion. Perhaps I might mention — 3. Pride of wit. Now I go in for a sunny, cheerful religion. God has, put within us a faculty of mirthfulness, which He did not mean us to suppress. There is no necessary connection between dulness and piety, between a long face and a new heart. True, but there are some men who are hardly ever serious. (J. T. Davidson, D. D.) To be successful or prosperous, to get on in the world, or to be strong, is what every one, be his position what it may, longs for and struggles after. Prosperity is a relative term. A king is prosperous or strong when from strength of character and purity of life he has secured the confidence and love of his people, and the respect of neighbouring sovereigns and nations. A merchant is prosperous when his dealings are followed by remunerative gains. A minister of Jesus Christ is prosperous when he benefits souls and instructs men's minds, and leads them to think of something higher and more lasting than the passing show of the world. To be prosperous, to be strong, is in one word to get on in one's own department, and at one's peculiar work. Whatever success be ours we ought to acknowledge that God has been with us. It is just here that men are so often thoughtless and ungrateful, and have their heart lifted up to destruction. We see this often in the case —1. Of individuals. 2. Of families. 3. Of Churches. 4. Of nations. (W. Mackintosh Arthur, M.A.) Rightly to apprehend Uzziah's sin, we must remember through what barriers he had to break before he could resolve to do this thing. He had to disregard the direct command of Jehovah that the priests alone should burn incense on His altar. He had to despise the history of his people, to reject the solemn lessons that he had learned from childhood. He was defiling his own sacred things; the Jewish history was the history of his own people, the charter of his own blessings; the temple and the priesthood were the solemn ordinances of his own worship. He was impiously defying the holy name by which he himself was called.I. PROSPERITY AND PRIDE. "Uzziah did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah did. And he sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God: and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper." The results of godly training and holy companionship are often seen in the prudence, and diligence, and sobriety which command success and reputation. The modes of life which the influence of the gospel forms, which are the tradition of Christian households, are just those which conduce to happiness and honour. Mere worldly prosperity is often the prelude to daring impiety. It is a perpetual question how to "remove" the "hireling" spirit out of the Church. Men whose ships bring them wealth, whose plans in business succeed, come to fancy themselves fit for any place of responsibility in the Church. Churches love to pay honour to men of wealth; choose for places of special service, not those of pure heart, and fervent faith, and lowly self-denial, but those who have succeeded in business, and whose plans, it is therefore thought, must needs be followed. Uzziah was a good king, but he was a bad priest; he was not the priest whom God had chosen. Men whose godliness, and integrity, and Christian conduct have won them respect are most valuable helps in all Christian activities. But mere worldly success is a poor standard by which to measure these things, and ought never to be allowed to secure to any voice and direction in Church affairs. "It appertains not to these to burn incense unto the Lord." It is a matter of personal experience how prosperity lifts up the heart, and lures us to destruction. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." II. PRIDE AND PUNISHMENT. "Here now," you may be ready to say, "is something in the story which is simply Jewish, quite foreign to the life of to-day. Do you mean to say that God visits men with judgments now? Is there anything here to come home to the hearts of Englishmen?" I do say that God is judging us; the same God who judged His people of old. There is in this very part of the narrative something to set us thinking on the mysteries of our daily life, and to help in their interpretation. Suppose, now, a physician had given us a purely medical report of this incident. Suppose he had told us that there was in Uzziah an unsuspected taint of leprosy: a taint which, if he had been careful of himself, especially avoiding strong passionate excitements, might never have developed into actual symptoms of disease. Hereditary or constitutional disease may often lurk for a lifetime unsuspected, till some circumstance favours its development, and instantaneously it works itself out in all its power. Of all such favouring circumstances, strong passionate excitement is the surest; in the heat of pride the seeds of sickness are frequently quickened. What stories are more impressive or more common than those of men suddenly stricken down on the eve of the gratification of their pride, in the first thrill of triumph, in the very fever of unbridled ambition? A man has been all his lifetime amassing wealth; satisfied at length, he builds himself a lordly mansion, that he may rank with the nobles of the land. He builds, but he never enjoys it — he is found some morning smitten with impotence; and the palsied speech-muscles refuse to articulate a word. A statesmen is summoned to the royal presence-chamber; at the council-table the blood-stain at his lips declares that honours and life will soon be laid together in the dust. A student is called to preside over some learned body; his brain gives way, and the asylum is henceforth his home. Instead of leprosy, read paralysis or haemorrhage, or softening of the brain, and it is just a narrative from our daily press. Say what we will, this is true, that pride and passion, unregulated ambition and impious recklessness, do terribly punish those whom they enslave. The Jewish story interprets the English life. If Englishman trace these things to natural causes, and go no further, while the Jew says, "God has smitten him," the Jew is right and the Englishman is wrong. It is a sign of unbelief and folly to refuse to trace God's hands, save in events that are utterly unintelligible. God's great work is to reveal, not to hide Himself. It is part of His order of nature that bodily pains should often reveal and rebuke the workings of an ungodly soul. The hour of pride is often, too, an hour of terrible revelation of hidden spiritual taints; which of us has not found secret sine leaping to light in the heats of unbridled passion? We flattered ourselves that God made us to prosper because we sought Him. Our seeking of Him became a tradition of the past, a memory; we thought we had overcome our temptations, laid aside our easily besetting sin; and, even while we boasted, we fell before God and men. We have thanked God we were not as other men; suddenly we have had to change our boasting, we have known ourselves the chief of sinners. As long as we seek God, He will make us to prosper; but only so long. Keep we ever near Him, ever following Him, ever obeying and trusting Him, and we shall be "marvellously helped and be strong." III. PUNISHMENT AND SHAME. Hope concerning Uzziah is given in the record of his hasting to go out of the temple. His proud heart was broken; he was smitten with shame. There needed not "the priests, the valiant men," to thrust him out: "Yea, himself hasted also to go out, because the Lord had smitten him." It may have been mere terror that drove him forth, the force of circumstances, and not a convicted, penitent heart. His self-abasement may have been as godless as was his exaltation. It may have been so; but it may have been far otherwise. Assuredly God intended it to be otherwise. Of the seven years that he spent in the "several house" we know nothing; of this we may be sure, that during all those years God was seeking to restore and save his soul. In solitude, while his son was over his kingdom, and regents were doing the work God had taken from his hands, he might have learnt many a lesson he had not learnt upon the throne. The dignity and service forfeited through pride may be never regained. A stain may cling to the name; the reputation long held honourable, and lost through a shameful fall, may not even after death be recovered. Sons may blush more over the dishonourable grave and the one terrible sin of their fathers than they triumph in the glory of a whole life. Impiety is a fearful thing, and has a fearful curse. (A. Mackennal, B.A.) We need more than animals to make a commonwealth worth preserving; we need more than bodies, and more than what is usually, but too narrowly, denominated practical substance; we need the religious element, the spiritual force, that marvellous telescopic faculty that looks away beyond the visible into that which is unseen. We need to have ghostly men among us; men who see the metaphysical in the literal; men who know that nothing is true that is not metaphysically true; men who insist that we see nothing with the naked eye, and that vision is a heart-gift, an inward faculty, a sublime treasure entrusted to men of God. Thus the Church will always have an important part to play in the upbuilding of the State, in the government of kings, in the direction of great affairs.(J. Parker, D.D.) People Aaron, Amaziah, Ammonites, Amos, Amoz, Arabians, Azariah, Hananiah, Isaiah, Jecholiah, Jecoliah, Jeiel, Jotham, Maaseiah, Maonites, Mehunim, Meunim, Meunites, Uzziah, ZechariahPlaces Angle, Ashdod, Corner Gate, Egypt, Eloth, Gath, Gurbaal, Jabneh, Jerusalem, Shephelah, Valley GateTopics TRUE, Continued, During, Fear, Instructed, Prosper, Prospered, Searching, Seek, Seeking, Sought, Success, Understanding, Vision, Visions, Wise, Zechariah, Zechari'ahOutline 1. Uzziah succeeding, and reigning well in the days of Zechariah, prospers16. Waxing proud, he invades the priest's office, and is smitten with leprosy 22. He dies, and Jotham succeeds him Dictionary of Bible Themes 2 Chronicles 26:5 5776 achievement 5302 education Library Jabneh. Jamnia. ...Pliny doth dispose the towns here in this order;--"Azotus, the two Jamnes, Joppe."--R. Benjamin, in the order backward, thus,--"Joppah, Jabneh, Azotus." That is Jabneh with this author, that is Jaminia with the other. A remembrance of this place is in 2 Chronicles 26:6: but the chief fame of it is for the Sanhedrim, that was placed there, both before the destruction of Jerusalem and after. Rabban Gamaliel, St. Paul's master, first presided there. Under whom came forth that cursed form of prayer, … John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica The Great Slaughters and Sacrilege that were in Jerusalem. Of Preparation. Obedience Chronicles Links 2 Chronicles 26:5 NIV2 Chronicles 26:5 NLT 2 Chronicles 26:5 ESV 2 Chronicles 26:5 NASB 2 Chronicles 26:5 KJV 2 Chronicles 26:5 Bible Apps 2 Chronicles 26:5 Parallel 2 Chronicles 26:5 Biblia Paralela 2 Chronicles 26:5 Chinese Bible 2 Chronicles 26:5 French Bible 2 Chronicles 26:5 German Bible 2 Chronicles 26:5 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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