Uzziah is one of the more interesting Kings. He’s mentioned in the sixth chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah begins, “in the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord… High and lifted up.” He was a very strong King. He defeated the Philistines. He established a powerful military presence that the surrounding nations respected. He made Judah a world power. But then we read, “But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction.”
Proverbs 16:18 tells us that “pride goes before a fall.” Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. God hates it. Proverbs 8:13 says, “I hate pride and arrogance.” Proverbs 16:5 says “The Lord despises pride.” Also Proverbs 15:25 says, “The Lord will tear down the house of the proud.” That’s what happened to Uzziah. Even the New Testament speaks against it. Philippians 2:3: “Do nothing out of vain conceit.” 1 Peter 5:5: “God gives grace to the humble but he opposes the proud.”
Pride is often called “The Devil’s Sin” because it was his pride that caused him to rebel from God’s lawful authority. Pride is a sin we can never fully conquer for when we think we have it’s strongest within us. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “There is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive. Even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”
David Rhodes says, “Pride is the dandelion of the soul. Its root goes deep; only a little left behind sprouts again. Its seeds lodge in the tiniest encouraging cracks. And it flourishes in good soil: The danger of pride is that it feeds on goodness.”
When things are going well, watch out!
Chuck
“But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.” 1 John 1:7(NLT)