Seductive Success or Glorifying Success?

But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the Lord his God and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.

2 Chronicles 26:16

Vernon Carl Grounds (American theologian, Christian educator, Chancellor of Denver Seminary) shares the following incident about Arturo Toscanini (He was one of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and of the 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail) in the Christianity Today magazine.

One evening the great conductor Arturo Toscanini brilliantly conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The audience went mad; people clapped, whistled, and stomped their feet. Toscanini bowed and bowed. He signalled to the orchestra, and its members stood to acknowledge the wild applause. Eventually the applause began to subside. Toscanini turned, looked intently at his musicians. They thought Arturo was angry that somebody missed the cue. Scarcely able to talk, he whispered fiercely, “Gentlemen, I am nothing.” “But Beethoven,” said Toscanini in a tone of adoration, “is everything, everything, everything!”

Success is something that we all want to obtain. We want to have it, we want to keep it, and we usually want others to know when it was that we received it. Success in and of itself is a good thing. All of us should strive to be successful in whatever it is that we are doing for it reflects on the kind of God that we serve. The Bible encourages us to go out and be successful.

Believe it or not, the greatest risk for falling or stumbling for the Christian is not during a trial or tribulation, but when they’ve just achieved something great. It’s our tendency to believe that it’s from our own effort and not from God’s sovereign hand, but this robs God of glory. We fail to see that everything that happens in our life is the result of a loving and sovereign God.

Looking at the life of King Uzziah we see that he succeeded admirably, but his success seduced him into pride; his pride led to a sin that in a few moments nullified years of achievements. Though he reigned for 52 years and had many outstanding accomplishments, he was remembered by the sad epitaph, “He is a leper” (2 Chronicles 26:23).

Uzziah was a hard-working, visionary king. 2 Chronicles 26:5 makes it clear that the source of his success was not his effort or genius, but the Lord: “He set himself to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God, and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper.” Uzziah’s success was due to seeking God and His Word.

Uzziah was a leader of far-reaching vision, whose accomplishments included both domestic and foreign projects. Verse 2 notes that he built Eloth and restored it to Judah. Furthermore he subdued a number of Philistine cities to the west of Jerusalem and built Israeli cities in their region (26:6). He conquered the Arabians and Meunites to the south, and the Ammonites to the east paid him tribute (26:7-8). Uzziah also fortified Jerusalem, thus restoring the defense against the Northern Kingdom which his father had lost (26:9). Furthermore he built towers for the defense of his vast agricultural and livestock holdings in the outlying countryside (26:10). The land prospered under the reign of King Uzziah.

Whenever God grants that kind of success and fame to a person, it should be used for the Lord and His purpose. Fame is simply an opportunity to tell more people of the greatness of God, so that His name is exalted. We ought to view any measure of success God gives us as a trust to be managed for His glory and kingdom.

The hinge of the story of King Uzziah is in verse 15 which we have taken for our devotion: “... for he was marvelously helped until he was strong.” Uzziah’s problem was precisely that, he became strong. Uzziah’s success and strength led to his downfall.

Someone has said that the human being is the only animal that you can pat on the back and his head swells up. In one hour he ruined a prosperous lifetime as a successful king. When Uzziah became strong, his heart was lifted up, and that led him to enter the holy place in the temple to offer incense to the Lord. But the Law of Moses restricted that duty to the priests, and Uzziah was not a priest (Num. 18:1-7).

God gave Uzziah one last chance to change through the warning of the priest. He wouldn’t take it. He had leprosy to the day he died. Never again did he enter his splendid palace or the temple of the Lord. If he had of known then, what he knew now, I doubt if he would have ever challenged the authority of God over his life. He had allowed his own success to do him in.

Dear Friends, How many of us today are in that point where we are doing wrong, but insist its okay to keep doing it, because we won’t get caught.

This Lenten Season Let us try to have the attitude we saw in the story where we say we are nothing and God is everything. Whenever we receive the applause and praises of people for what we do, may we be able to remember the story of King Uzziah, that the seductive danger of success and always whisper, “Apart from Christ, I can do nothing!”

God Bless You.