How are your New Year's resolutions going? Did you ever actually make any? As an Enneagram three (the achiever) I am constantly setting goals and aiming high. Words like change, progress, and breakthrough get me excited. As you can imagine I also struggle with burn-out, compassion fatigue, and can overbook myself.
My objective in 2024 is to strive for things that can't possibly lead to exhaustion. I want to pray with thanksgiving, slow dance with my husband often, and read poetry aloud with my daughter.
Stopping to smell the roses after successes is necessary; but I can't help but reflect on Hezekiah. Last week's blog post covered some of Hezekiah's accomplishments but most importantly put him in the category of "pleasing in the sight of the Lord."
What about Hezekiah’s failure? Deeply embedded in Christian aspiration is the desire to end well. We know that no man is without sin, but Hezekiah’s misstep came disturbingly at the end of his life and had egregious consequences.
After Hezekiah's miraculous healing we are told, "But Hezekiah did not respond appropriately to the kindness shown him, and he became proud. So the Lord’s anger came against him and against Judah and Jerusalem." (NLT). Fortunately, Hezekiah repented of his pride. Disaster diverted! Or was it?
Before we can get too comfortable we read one of the most sobering kinds of verses in all of scripture, "However, when ambassadors arrived from Babylon to ask about the remarkable events that had taken place in the land, God withdrew from Hezekiah in order to test him and to see what was really in his heart." (NLT)
It was test time and Hezekiah did not pass. He foolishly (and proudly) showed off all of the kingdom's treasures and armory. Isaiah then came with the drastic message from the Lord, "The time is coming when everything in your palace—all the treasures stored up by your ancestors until now—will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. Some of your very own sons will be taken away into exile. They will become eunuchs who will serve in the palace of Babylon’s king.” (NLT)
Savage!
How could an unwise move after so much faithfulness to the Lord have such disastrous generational implications?
Sure Hezekiah had a pride problem. It is possible that when Hezekiah repented, he did not actually change his ways. Perhaps some insight can be found in Hezekiah's response to Isaiah's prophecy, “This message you have given me from the Lord is good.” For the king was thinking, “At least there will be peace and security during my lifetime.” (NLT)
Three kings after Hezekiah and over fifty years later we see an alternative perspective.
Like Hezekiah, Josiah "did right in the sight of the Lord," repaired the Temple, and valued the Book of the Law.
At the beginning of Josiah's reign the prophetess Huldah spoke for the Lord to Josiah, "‘I am going to bring disaster on this city and its people. . . for my people have abandoned me and offered sacrifices to pagan gods, and I am very angry with them for everything they have done. My anger will be poured out on this place, and it will not be quenched." (NLT)
Josiah was offered the same comfort as Hezekiah: the promise that the prophesied calamity would not happen in his lifetime.
Hezekiah was relieved but Josiah got to work. Josiah gathered the elders and started reading the Book of the Covenant aloud to the people, thus educating his subjects in the ways of the Lord and reinstituted Passover.
Both kings sought the Lord and brought godly reforms, and both kings impacted their generation for the better. Hezekiah's response suggests that he was a good king in his day, while Josiah's response indicates that he was not only concerned with his kingdom but God's eternal Kingdom.
As we set goals and pursue progress, let us not be so shortsighted as to think only of our lifetime.
Consider this passage from Ephesians:
This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone.
God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home. (MSG)
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