Story 2: King Uzziah

2 Chronicles 26

Over the years, many of the Kings of Judah were good, but most of them were not.  At the point in the story where we will begin, King Joash had been reigning over Judah for forty years.  He was a very good king.  He had restored the holy Temple and led the people of God into righteous worship of their Lord.

Yet Joash did not destroy the high places where many of the people in Judah went to worship idols.  They hoped that the gods of other nations might work in power to answer their prayers.  What an insult to God!  They did not care about His will or His great love.  They wanted their own way, and they would bow down to any idol that would give them what they wanted.

This angered God.  He had chosen them to be His special priests to the nations around them.  The people of Israel were supposed to teach the world about the Most Holy God.  Instead, they rejected the Lord and bowed down to statues made by the hands of people.

After Joash died, his son became king.  Several other kings came and went. Some of them were good, and some of them were bad, but none of them removed the high places of idol worship.  One of the great, great grandsons of Joash was a king named Uzziah (2 Kings 15:1-7; 2 Chron. 26).   He reigned as king for fifty-two years and did many wonderful things to make the Southern Kingdom strong.  He built up new, thick towers to guard the city of Jerusalem.  He had a powerful, quick army to protect his people and attack their enemies.  The men in Uzziah’s army were given shields and special armor to protect their bodies.  They were given powerful weapons to fight with.  Israel’s strong army meant that other nations did not attack them because they were afraid to.  The people of Israel went without war for many years.

Freedom from war was very important.  When war happened in those days, the armies would march through the neighborhoods and villages outside of the city.  The enemy would often destroy all the homes, kill the men, and kidnap the women and children.  If the enemy won, they would take whole families and villages back to their own country to become slaves.   The people of Judah knew how awful it was.  They were very happy and grateful to King Uzziah that they had lived their lives in peace.

King Uzziah also helped the farmers of the nation of Israel so there was plenty to eat.  Imagine how awful it would be to go without food.  When a famine came, people would often go for months and even years with very little to eat each day.  Everyone suffered, and often many would die of starvation.  Famines happened a lot in those days, and most people spent at least several years of their lives with hunger.  But by building up the farms of Judah, King Uzziah had protected his people from that horrible pain as well.

In many ways, Uzziah was an excellent leader.   God had blessed the king.  But instead of giving thanks and glory to the Lord, Uzziah became very proud and arrogant.  He took credit for all of this in his heart.  He believed that all of these good things were because he was a great man, not because God had given him great gifts.  He forgot to be grateful.  He was so proud that he decided he could break the special, sacred code that the Lord had set for worship at the Temple.

Far back in time, when God gave the law to Moses, He had given a beautiful set of rules and regulations to bring order and goodness to the nation of Israel.  One of these regulations was to assign a group of people, the holy, consecrated priests of the LORD, the special, sacred job of serving in the holy Temple in Jerusalem.  They were the only people ever allowed to enter the inner courtyard of the sanctuary.    All of Israel would bring their sacrifices to the priests.  The priests would take their offerings into the Temple to offer to the LORD.  That was the ordained role that God had given them.  But now, King Uzziah thought he had a better plan.  He did not want to give the sacrifice to someone else to offer to God.  He was the king!  He decided that he was worthy to enter the Temple, he did not need the help of a priest.

As the king marched through the courts of the Temple on his way to make the sacrifice, it must have caused a great commotion.  He was the most powerful man in the nation, wherever he went it was a great affair.  He took his offering up the steps, into the chamber of the Temple where only the priests were allowed to go.

The Jews at the Temple that day must have been shocked.  What was he doing?  Even the great kings of old had not dared to do such an outrageous act against the law of God!  But who could stop him?  The king had the power to have anyone who opposed him killed.  Would anybody stand up against him? 

A very brave priest named Azariah rose up with bold courage against the king. Uzziah may have been king of Israel, but God reigns as King overall.  The LORD had given Uzziah many important responsibilities, but God had not made him a priest.  Uzziah was defying Yahweh even as he was worshipping Yahweh!  He was really worshipping and displaying his own power!

Azariah the priest brought eighty other brave priests with him into the Temple.  They all stood in front of Uzziah in confrontation with their king.  “It is not right for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the LORD” said Azariah.  “That is for the priests, the descendants of Aaron, who have been consecrated to burn incense.  Leave the sanctuary, for you have been unfaithful; and you will not be honored by the LORD God.”  Wow, that is a bold thing to say to the most powerful man in the nation!

Uzziah froze there in the Temple with the censer in his hand, raised in the air, just about to offer incense.  His face turned red.  How dare they try to stop him?  He flew into a terrible rage against the priests of God.  As he stormed and screamed in his wrath, the priests watched something very strange happen.  As he yelled and raged, something gross and white was spreading on his forehead.  It was a terrible disease.  It was leprosy!  The chief priest and all the other priests watched as it kept spreading across his face.   Their own faces must have been filled with fear.  They warned him.  Uzziah saw their faces and knew something was terribly wrong.  The priests rushed him out of the holy Temple of God.

King Uzziah was plagued with leprosy for the rest of his life.  It was a deadly disease that they believed was very contagious.  Anyone who came too near him would get leprosy, too.  Uzziah had to live separately from everyone else.  He had to move out of the palace and live in a separate home so that he would not give the leprosy to others.  He would never again visit the Temple.  Because he had leprosy, he could no longer rule as king.  His son took over as governor of Judah. Uzziah’s pride had cost him everything.  

What a great difference between King Joash and his great great-grandson, King Uzziah.  Joash had restored the Temple to honor the glory of God.  Uzziah had dishonored the ways of God by tossing aside God’s plan for worship in the Temple.  The nation of Judah had a chance to learn a great lesson through God’s judgment on Uzziah.  Would they turn from their own false worship on the high places, or would they continue to pursue idols and wickedness?