The Weakness of Strength

I’m going to read again from 2 Chronicles and this time from… Did we give any indication in this of what I was doing? No, we just gave it a title. Okay. So, 2 Chronicles 26. Two Chronicles 26. So, I will read this all the way for a while, and then I’ll leave you to deal with the rest:

“And all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king instead of his father Amaziah. He built Eloth and restored it to Judah, after the king slept with his fathers. Uzziah was sixteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jecoliah of Jerusalem. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah had done. 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.

“He went out and made war against the Philistines and broke through the wall of Gath and the wall of Jabneh and the wall of Ashdod, and he built cities in the territory of Ashdod and elsewhere among the Philistines. God helped him against the Philistines and against the Arabians who lived in Gurbaal and against the Meunites. The Ammonites paid tribute to Uzziah, and his fame spread even to the border of Egypt, for he became very strong. Moreover, Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem at the Corner Gate and at the Valley Gate and at the Angle, and fortified them. And he built towers in the wilderness and cut out many cisterns, for he had large herds, both in the Shephelah and in the plain, and he had farmers and vinedressers in the hills and in the fertile lands, for he loved the soil. Moreover, Uzziah had an army of soldiers, fit for war, in divisions according to the numbers in the muster made by Jeiel the secretary and Maaseiah the officer, under the direction of Hananiah, one of the king’s commanders. The whole number of the heads of fathers’ houses of mighty men of valor was 2,600. Under their command was an army of 307,500, who could make war with mighty power, to help the king against the enemy. And Uzziah prepared for all the army shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows, and stones for slinging. In Jerusalem he made machines, invented by skillful men, to be on the towers and the corners, to shoot arrows and great stones. And his fame spread …, for he was marvelously helped, till he was strong.

“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. But Azariah the priest went in after him, with eighty priests of the Lord who were men of valor, and they withstood King Uzziah and said to him, ‘It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense. Go out of the sanctuary, for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor from the Lord God.’ Then Uzziah was angry. Now he had a censer in his hand to burn incense, and when he became angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead in the presence of the priests in the house of the Lord, by the altar of incense. And Azariah the chief priest and all the priests looked at him, and behold, he was leprous in his forehead! And they rushed him out quickly, and he himself hurried to go out, because the Lord had struck him. And King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death, and being a leper lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord. And Jotham his son was over the king’s household, governing the people of the land.

“Now the rest of the acts of Uzziah, from first to last, Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz wrote. And Uzziah slept with his fathers, and they buried him with his fathers in the burial field that belonged to the kings, for they said, ‘He is a leper.’ And Jotham his son reigned in his place.”

Amen.

Father, please take your truth, plant it deep in us, so that we might, by the power of the Holy Spirit, be increasingly shaped and fashioned in the likeness of your dearly beloved Son, Jesus,[1] in whose name we pray. Amen.

Well, it’s quite a chilling chapter to read, isn’t it? Incidentally, I do hope you read the Bible for your congregation and that you practice so that you don’t stumble and bumble around in it and read it as if somehow or another you were actually capable of translating it directly from the Hebrew yourself. The only person I’ve seen doing that—and he can do it—is Dale Ralph Davis, who will sometimes just read from the original Hebrew and provide his own translation while he’s going. That’s a dimension of geography that is entirely alien to me. But when you listen to somebody read the Bible, you can tell whether, one, they are prepared and, secondly, whether they regard it as an immense privilege to be able to do so.

Anyway, just a word of exhortation passing by. And it’s not going to help just to shoot stuff up on the screen and make reference to it. “[Give] yourself to the public reading of Scripture.”[2] It’s a great gap as I travel the country. If I didn’t read the Bible, it wouldn’t be read most of the time. I mean, there’s no liturgy in the thing at all. I mean, it’s just like, “Whatever we’re doing.”

Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that. Sorry. All right. Okay.

Well, let me begin by making a plea for you to read obituaries. To read obituaries. I have made it a pattern for me, partly because of the newspapers that I have on my iPad. But The Times of London has usually three obituaries every day. And so I usually don’t know who the people are. Sometimes I know it because it might have been a sportsman or somebody of prominence. But most of the time, I don’t know who they are. And I read them because good obituaries are just like minibiographies. And eventually, it may start off about someone who was in the Second World War or whatever it is, and then eventually it says, you know, “And Bill Jenkins was born in Ilkley, Yorkshire, in,” you know, “1932,” and gives you all the background to it. And it’s just quite fascinating.

And very often, again, as I read those obituaries—and it wasn’t true when I was in my fifties, but now I’m in my seventies—now, I don’t want to become morbid about it, but I have noticed that the dates have really caught up with me and that I usually was reading obituaries, and I’d say, “Oh! I wonder what it must be like to be that age.” But now I’m reading obituaries of people who were born in the 1950s, some of them actually older than me, and I’m seeing them passing away.

The church of Jesus Christ is the only place that has the answer to the issue of death.

The benefit of it, I think, apart from just getting an insight into people and good illustrations, is that it is a reminder to us of the frailty of our lives and the brevity of our lives and the fact that we are like a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.[3] And we know that all flesh is like grass and the glory of man like the flower of the field and so on.[4] And you don’t want to become some boring, old guy who’s sort of morbid, but we do want to make sure that we have that in our minds.

And so, let me make a second plea, for visiting graveyards, for the very same reason: that the dates that are there that only have a dash in between them are, again, reminders to us of the things that our culture is, you know, constantly trying to run away from. I’m going to end my time here at Parkside in less than a year, and one of the disappointments for me is the fact that I was unable to convince the leadership of the church—although I was able to convince the church, but not the leadership—to put a graveyard on our property here. And they thought, I think, it was self-serving, ’cause I wanted a free burial or something. That might have been subliminal. I don’t know. But that wasn’t the point. The point was: The church of Jesus Christ is the only place that has the answer to the issue of death. And so there’s a reason why when you go down in the Carolinas, for example, and you go to those old Presbyterian churches, that the graves that are there—some of them from the Civil War and so on—the history is a reminder to us. You say, “Oh, you don’t want to do that. Children will be upset, you know.” Well, they’re supposed to be upset! They’re supposed to walk through that and realize that this is what happens to our earthly pilgrimage, so that we might make the best use of the time that we have and that we don’t get out of control.

And some of the epitaphs are really good. I was just in wherever I was in Canada, ’cause we took that cruise, and I went to the graveyard for the Titanic, where a large number of people who were lost on the Titanic are buried in that place. It was very salutary and, you know, profoundly moving, and actually, again, very helpful. In Scotland, some of the graves have, you know, humorous things on them, like, “Interred beneath this kirkyard stane”—stone—“interred beneath this kirkyard stane lies stingy Jimmy Wyatt, who died one morning just at ten and saved a dinner by it.” So that’s good! That’s good, you know. I saw that; I remembered that one. I said, “That’s a very good one.”

But here’s the point: How tragic would it be, after years of usefulness, to leave a legacy that speaks only of failure? For the epitaph on the stone of Uzziah simply to read, “He had leprosy”?

The Factors That Made Uzziah

Now, from thinking with Jehoshaphat about the power of weakness, we now look to Uzziah, who gives us an amazing illustration of the weakness of power. Jehoshaphat leaves a lasting impression of being a good man, maybe a great man, although he also was weak. And one of his weaknesses—and you need to read the rest of the narrative to get this—but one of his weaknesses was he had an inability to say no. He found it very, very hard to actually say, “No, we’re not going to be doing that,” or “No.” And yet that weakness actually proved in due course to be a means of strength to him.

Uzziah, by contrast, as we read it, is a strong man. He’s powerful. He’s decisive. He’s influential in his leadership—all of these factors being praiseworthy. But when it comes to the crunch, he answered the psalmist’s question, “I lift … my eyes to the [hills]…” Psalm 121: “I lift … my eyes to the [hills]—where does my help come from?” He answered it wrong. The answer is “My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”[5] Uzziah asked the question, “Where’s my help come from?” and essentially he said, “My help comes from me. I know about this.”

And two-thirds of the chapter which I just read describe the positive impact of his leadership. The positive impact of his leadership. You can’t gainsay that at all. By any standards, Uzziah—whose name, incidentally, means, “The Lord is my strength.” Golly! Yeah. His father was murdered; you can read of that in 2 Kings 14. His father is murdered, and he steps up, and in all aspects of national life, he puts his mark on things, all to the good.

I don’t want to work my way through all of that. You don’t need me to. I read it; you can make note of it. He was capable in the realm of national security; there would be nobody just flooding over the borders under Uzziah’s reign. He was capable of strategic military positioning—his ability to marshal troops, to prepare troops, to secure them. He was able to develop things commercially. He obviously had a very good grasp of what was needed, was able to motivate people to provide what was needed for the strength of the nation, and so on. Agriculturally, it even says that he was able for all of these things.

And in many ways, we would say of Uzziah that he had the Midas touch. I mean, just about anything he turned his hand to, he was able to do it. He was one of these really annoying people that you went to school with, you know, who can run the four hundred meters in a good time, they’re always really good at math, they can do science, and so it goes on. You’re like, “Oh! Leave me, please. I don’t want to be with you anymore at all.” And I’ve got a lot of friends like that. In fact, most of my friends were like that. That’s why I didn’t have any friends at the end of the day.

No matter what he turned his hand to, he was successful. That’s the point. He was a whiz kid. He’s off to a flying start. He’s up for any challenge. He’s able to see around the corners. I mean, he’s the perfect guy for the elders sitting him down to say, “What is your five-year plan?” I mean, Uzziah’s: “Would you like it strategically? Would you like it—how would you like me to do it? Would you like me to give you it agriculturally or commercially or militarily? I’ll put it down any way you would like. I can print it out for you as well, or I could send it to you in an email. I’ve got it all under control, and I’m really very good at that as well.”

Now, the Chronicler is very good here, because given that, he gives us, if you like, the hidden factors that made him the leader that he actually was. Now, let me simply point them out without development. And just thinking in terms of the way in which we would teach a passage: The idea that the way to really get the passage is to be laboriously working your way inexorably from this to this to this—which will allow us to say, “Yeah, we understand that that goes from there”—but sometimes it’s far more helpful to stand far enough back from it to see the parameters of it and also to see the points of influence in it, depending on what you’re doing. But we’re not writing commentaries—at least, we’re not supposed to be. We’re actually trying to unpack the Scriptures as best we can.

And sometimes our sermons will have… Somebody just gave me a wonderful little children’s book here with an opportunity to color in between the lines. And sometimes we will color in between the lines more than on other occasions. But sometimes all that we’re really doing is giving a charcoal sketch.

I had an art teacher called Tommy Walker at the grammar school in Yorkshire, and I was pathetic at art. You can tell I was pretty pathetic at a number of things. But I was pathetic at that as well. He would say, “Now, I want you to go home and draw a chair.” I can see a chair; I can’t draw that chair. And so I would do it. And he always gave marks out of five. That was—if you got a hundred percent, you got five out of five. That’s how he graded it. And he used to give me my chair back with—and it would say, like, a quarter. He was unashamed! You know, and frankly, I thought that was generous! But I used to say to him, “Mr. Walker, could you not just… Could you not just get me started?” And he goes, “Well, all right, lad. I’ll get you started, but I’m not doing it for you. You got to do it yourself.”

Part of our thing is not just feeding our people but teaching them how to cook for themselves, teaching them how to handle the Bible, teaching them how to deal with the material in a way that they realize, “I don’t need to know everything about everything, but I am a sensible person. I can read the Bible. I can see the way this thing unfolds.” And so, if you like, what I’m doing here is charcoal. I’m not coloring in. I’m not coloring it in.

So, what are the factors that made him? Just one or two.

In verse 4, we’re told that “he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord”—that “the law of the Lord is perfect”; it “[converts] the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure,”[6] and so on. “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” And then the Chronicler gives us, though, just a little hint at the end of that when it says that “he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah had done.” That’s the little sting in the tail. Because you go back and check on Amaziah and say, “Ah! So he was actually modeling some of Amaziah’s stuff—which was a combo. It’s the Lord-plus or whatever it is, or the Lord-minus.”[7] Nevertheless, that’s what we’re told: “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord,” with that little PS to it.

He sought God—verse 5: “He set himself to seek God.” That is volitional. That is not an expression of the emotional stirrings in the heart of Uzziah. Whatever stirrings there were in his heart, he set himself to seek God. It’s Paul, you know: “That I [might] know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his [suffering]”[8]—those imperatives that run all the way through those things. He would be fine with that.

He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, up to a point. He sought God: “He set himself to seek” him. And according to verse 5, he was under instruction: “He set himself to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God.” This is a reminder, isn’t it, that we’re all the beneficiaries of the influences that come into our lives? And Zechariah—I imagine they met, you know, early in the morning for the equivalent of coffee, and Zechariah said, “I’m going to talk you through some things here and keep you on the right track.”

Bob Butts’s dad was an elder when I came here—and he hates it when I tell this story, but he kind of likes it too. But his dad was trying to help me because I, you know, I said, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” So he said, “Well, that’s okay. I can help you.” And so we would meet at Bob’s Big Boy, I think it was called. And his dad was a very organized guy. He ran, and he had a big book, and it had, like, every-fifteen-minute increments in it or something like that—you know, where, what he was doing. My day would be like: “7:00: Get up. 7:15: Think about going back to bed. 7:30: Read my Bible. 7:35: No, read it later.”

So, anyway. So, he would meet with me to try and instruct me in the ways of the Lord and how to help me. And he was a big help to me. But what he wanted to try and get me to be able to do was all the things that I couldn’t do. And he actually even got me one of these books—and I don’t know where it is. I mean, it was a killer to me, because I’d look at the thing, and I’d go, “I can’t fill this out. I don’t know: What would I write in it? You know, I’ve got nothing to write in!”

But the biggest thing about it was that he loved Christ, he loved the church, and he loved me. And I know I disappointed him ’cause I couldn’t get up to speed with the program, but eventually, I think he just gave up on it. He realized I was a complete lost cause and prayed for me as a lost cause.

Well, I don’t want to read all that into Uzziah meeting with Zechariah, but Zechariah was encouraging him to fear God and keep his commandments: “Love God; love the people”—that kind of thing.

And, in verse 5, “God gave him success.”[9] “God gave him success.” Right? God is sovereign. He sets one up; he brings one down. He set him up. He gave him success. And as a result of his success, inevitably, his fame spread. His fame spread. Because he was so influential, he became very powerful. I think it says that in verse 8. Let me just check. Yeah: “His fame spread even to the border of Egypt, [because] he became very strong.” I think we go down to verse 15, we’re back there again in Jerusalem: He did all these things, “and his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped, [until] he [became] strong.”

That wasn’t the problem in itself, was it? Because actually, if you think of Caleb, Caleb was strong. “Here I am,” he says, “eighty-five years old and still as strong today as the day when Moses kind of launched me out.”[10] So strength in itself is not the issue. It’s the attachments to that which we then apply incorrectly, wrongly.

The Choices That Undid Uzziah

And, of course, it is in that context that the Chronicler pivots and takes us, if you like, from the factors that made him to the choices that undid him. The choices that undid him. He knew success. He knew influence. He knew power. He knew fame. But when did he stand up in the canoe? You know, you don’t stand up in canoes, right? That’s a stupid thing to do.

That’s another of my old-chestnut stories, but I used to play golf with a man who was the chairman of the big, huge pharmaceutical company that I can’t remember. Yeah. He was the guy! He was a big guy. And he was a big guy. And he was on the board of CAMP-of-the-WOODS up in the Adirondacks. I had met him only briefly. He had access to a nine-hole golf course that you couldn’t get on, and so we’d been there.

But one day, when he came over for lunch from his house, which was just here on the lake, to this house—was there—he came over in a canoe. He’d been at the morning service, at the chapel service, and he was coming over. He was still dressed. He had khakis on; he had a nice button-down shirt and everything else—came over in the canoe. And then he stood up. I said, “I can’t believe my eyes!” And he stood up, and then he wobbled, and then he baptized himself, completely—I mean, totally baptized himself! And he came up out of the water like a drowned rat, you know?

And the guy who was hosting the lunch—he was a dentist—he pulls him out, and he says to me, he says, “You know Ralph Larsen, don’t you?” I said, “Well, yeah”; I knew him. I said… And I remember I played golf with him another day, and I said, you know, “You’re the head of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, and yet you’re so stupid, you stood up in a canoe.” He didn’t like that. I probably shouldn’t have said it. But anyway: Don’t stand up! That’s dumb.

So when did he stand up? When was it that this turned for him? Well, “he was unfaithful to … God”—verse 16. “He was unfaithful to … God.” “When he was strong, he grew proud, to his [own] destruction. For”—explanation—“he was unfaithful to the Lord his God.”

And how did that express itself? Well, he “entered the temple.” “Yeah, but that’s okay. You can go into the temple.” No, no! He didn’t just enter the temple. He “entered the temple … to burn incense on the altar of incense.” In other words, he took to himself a prerogative that was not his to have. He took to himself a prerogative that was not his to have. (I could apply that fourteen ways right now, but I’m not going to go there in my mind.)

All right? And when he was challenged—when he was challenged… I love it when it says that “Azariah the priest went in after him, with eighty priests of the Lord.” He said, “I’m going in there right now—but not by myself! Hey, let’s… No, no, no, no! As many as possible. Yeah, come on! No, let’s all go in together! It’ll be much better if we go together.” “With eighty priests of the Lord.” There’s strength in numbers. And they “were men of valor.” You’d better be men of valor, because they’re going to stand up to this joker. And they said to him, “It[’s] not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord.” “What you’re doing is wrong. What you’re doing is wrong.”

Now, in that moment—and in those kind of moments, incidentally—there is opportunity for victory as opposed to failure, so that with the temptation he provided a way of escape.[11] These guys have come in en masse to capture you here right in this moment, and you have an opportunity. He doesn’t take the opportunity.

It makes me think of… There’s a book by a Methodist guy, Walt Wangerin or something like that—W-a-n-g-e-r-i-n. It’s a book of short stories. The best of them is called “The Ragman.” “The Ragman.” If you’ve never read it, make a note of this, because you’ll use it at Easter. It’s a truly amazing story—“The Ragman.” But in there, he tells all kinds of other stories. And he tells the story of a young couple. They had got married, and they were living in an apartment, and they started to get in a contretemps with one another—get in arguments. And he describes how the guy, when he got in an argument with his wife, he would just go out of the apartment and go, you know, walk around the block for a few times and come back.

And so, they’re having a discussion, he gets annoyed, it’s pouring outside, he grabs his coat, and he puts it on, and he slams the door—and he suddenly realizes that he slammed the corner of his coat in the door. So he’s got two options: one, that he just takes the coat off and leaves it hanging out and half in the door and goes out and gets wet; or he rings the doorbell. So he figured, “I’m not getting wet.” So he rings the doorbell. His wife opens the door, sees what has happened, and just starts to laugh uncontrollably. And he says, “And in that moment, there was the opportunity for reconciliation. But like a fool, I grabbed my coat, slammed the door, and walked out into the night.”[12] “And in that moment, like a fool,” would have said Uzziah, “I had the opportunity, but I didn’t take it even when it came.”

What’s going on with this guy? Well, he has an enlarged heart. An enlarged heart. He is suffering from spiritual congestive heart failure, whether he realizes it or not. This big blowout, if you like, in the temple is only taking place because of everything that is going on unseen—unseen by the general populace, maybe even by his wife, but not unseen by God. And in this eruption, suddenly, what is revealed is his self-focused, pumped-up heart.

I take it that by this time, he’s no longer going for the coffee meetings with Zechariah. Those were the days when he went and he realized, “I need the counsel of Zechariah. I need to be held in check. I need to be accountable”—whatever it might be. No, because now, you see, he’s decided that the rules don’t apply to him, that he can go where he wants, that he can do as he pleases. “After all, do you know how famous I am?” he might have said. “Do you know how many likes I’ve got? Do you know how many followers I have on my Facebook page? I mean, we’re not just talking nationally,” he might have said. “We’re talking internationally.”

In the golf game of life, he’s actually decided that he can take as many mulligans as he wants—that if he doesn’t like the ball that he hit, he can put down a second ball and play that ball and record his score on the strength of the one that he likes, not on the one that he doesn’t like. If you’ve ever played golf with anybody like that, never play golf with them again, because they’re not actually playing golf. I think he would have been perfectly happy with singing to himself as he went along the road,

To think I did all that,
And may I say, not in a shy way?
Oh no, not Uzziah;
I did it my way.

For what is a man? What has he got?
If not himself, it’s naught—
To do the things he really feels
And not the voice of one who yields.
No, the record shows I took the blows;
I did it my way.[13]

His success, it would seem, and his fame had blinded him to the generosity of God. And in seeking to take what wasn’t his to take, even what he had was taken away. Think of the parable of the minas in Luke chapter 19.[14]

So, if Jehoshaphat’s problem was that he couldn’t say no to others, Uzziah’s problem was that he couldn’t say no to himself—that he rejected the notion of noblesse oblige. The arrogance of Napoleon: “I am not an ordinary man, and the laws of morals and of wisdom were never made for me.” What a statement! What a statement: “I am not an ordinary man.” Yeah, you don’t realize how ordinary you are, Napoleon. It’s not only John Brown’s body that lies “a-moldering in the grave.”

If Jehoshaphat’s problem was that he couldn’t say no to others, Uzziah’s problem was that he couldn’t say no to himself.

Pride, the Silent Killer

What I find most demanding about this as I ponder it and think about it, even now as I’m speaking—what is striking is that this isn’t a story of vice; this isn’t a story of villainy; this is just a silent killer. And he’s not a youth. He’s not a youth. It’s bravado, but it’s not naive presumption. I mean, by this stage in life, you know what you know, and you know what you don’t know, and if you’re not going to be honest about those things, I don’t know how you really function. But what is fascinating is, you take Caleb, for example: eighty-five, strong, and going for it. This fellow: We don’t know what age he is, strong, and collapsing. I mean, that story is repeated again and again and again.

Nebuchadnezzar: you know, “Isn’t this the great … that I built?”[15] “Nobody’s ever seen gardens like this. This is the biggest crowd we’ve ever had. This is the most expansive influence, and there’s never been an issue like this in the entire history of America. There is nobody that’s been able to do this, and da-da-da-da-da-da.” “Dear God, help us and save us.” That’s the problem!

The big test for Daniel was not at the beginning, when he got a new name and a new education and rose to prominence. No, they’re going to put him in there as an old man. We’re going to find out whether, as an old man, the things that underpinned him as a young man are still there and they’re enough to keep him.

In the years now that I’ve had the privilege of being here—and what a privilege I’ve enjoyed (I mean being here in America)—it has been a constant refrain all the way through to watch people who initially were not my peers but were my heroes live the trajectory of Uzziah: gloriously helped till he became strong; grew strong; grew proud to his own destruction. I mean, this is—it’s as obvious as the nose on everybody’s face! This is how this goes.

But the deceitfulness of sin is the deceitfulness of sin. And when I can deceive myself… If you’re trying to deceive me, I’m going to push back against you, ’cause I know you’re trying to figure something out. So I can resist that, because it’s coming from outside of me. But self-deception—there’s no reason to resist it. No, you just go with it: “No, I’m okay. No, I didn’t mean that. No, I wasn’t there. No, I never said that.” “No” this, “no” that, the next thing. That’s the issue.

And in each instance—I don’t care whether it was sex, drugs, rock and roll, whatever you want to—I don’t care what it is, the issue’s the same issue: It’s pride! It’s pride. I mean, the pastor who becomes brave Sir Brian Botany[16]—that’s pride. And none of us are immune. None of us are immune. And the idea… I used to think, “You know, if you can make it to a certain age, then you’ll be like an old guy, and then it’ll be fine. Then you’ll never notice girls’ legs anymore.” Are you kidding me? That hasn’t happened. I’m going to be seventy-three years old. “If only I could get to that stage, then it would be fine.” No, it’s not fine. Why? Because the heart of man is “desperately wicked,”[17] and that we’re continually involved in “an irreconcilable war”[18] against the world and the flesh and the devil, all the way through to the end. That’s why we still need Zechariahs. That’s why we still need our wives. That’s why we still need all these boundaries around us to protect us from ourselves. From ourselves.

When we think about it, we’re not the center of the universe. We’re not even the center of our own universe.

James Taylor, whose lyrics I really enjoy—one of his songs is called “That’s Why I’m Here.” And he writes,

Fortune and fame’s
Such a curious game;
Perfect strangers
[They] call you by name
And [they] pay good money
To hear “Fire and Rain”
Again and again
And again.

And then he says, “[But] that’s why I’m here.” “That’s why I’m here.”

Some are like summer,
Coming back every year;
Got your baby, got your blanket,
Got your bucket of beer.
[And] I break into a grin
From ear to ear…[19]

“And I say to myself: ‘That’s why I’m here. I’m here to sing these songs.’” He knows who he is. He knows what he does.

And whether it’s within the framework of our own little company or whether it goes beyond that, we have to acknowledge—I’m prepared to acknowledge; I hope you are too—that, to quote Tillich, he says, “Every day in a thousand ways, we seek to make ourselves the center of the universe.” And when we think about it, we’re not the center of the universe. We’re not even the center of our own universe. And that’s why we have to help one another with this stuff. Because, you know, he who flatters his friend provides a net for his feet.[20] Flattery is like perfume: You can sniff it, but you shouldn’t swallow it.

My approach to… Because people say nice things, especially in America. Scotland, it doesn’t happen that much. They don’t do much nice things. So it’s good for me to go back regularly, ’cause they’re like, “So who do you think you are?” But I discount all the highs and all the way-down lows, you know. Like the…

I was trying to teach from John a few months ago, and I was dealing with the section where Jesus says, “Greater works than these will you do,”[21] to his disciples. And I tried to work my way through it, and I got a text from an older man—older than me—but who came to us out of a Pentecostal background. And obviously, he didn’t think that my exegesis of that particular passage was really anywhere close to the truth. But he didn’t go into it. He just sent me a text that said, “That is the worst sermon I’ve ever heard in my life.” I said, “Okay. That’s clarity right there. There’s no reason to beat around the bush, you know. That’s good. Okay.” So, you know, that’s fine. That’s good. I mean, I’ve heard some bad ones myself, but… Yeah, so, that’s not going to… I’ll still be back next Sunday, you know, even on the basis of that.

But then, at the other side of the thing, we have to learn that too. And one of the reasons God gives us children is to help us with that. You know, I remember when, years ago, Cedarville gave me an honorary doctorate, which—I don’t mean to laugh about it. But anyway, I got it. And I was in California with a group of young people, and my son was there. He was out there at that time. And he said, “Hey, Dad,” he said, “What’s that thing—somebody said you got this thing? An ‘honorary doctorate’?” He said, “What?” He obviously wasn’t impressed. And I said, “Well…” I said, “Son, it’s not exactly from Yale Divinity School.” And he says, “Dad, I love it when you say things like that.” It wasn’t worth that much.

He’s also the kid that said to me, “Why don’t you write a book that somebody wants to read?” He’s also the kid who, when I was driving through Solon, commenting on everybody’s driving except my own and explaining, “Move it over! Move it! The light! Come on! Come on!”—and I guess I’d gone through a few of these, a few traffic lights, and in the silence, a voice from the back said, “And that’s another kind word from your pastor.”

The same thing with our elders. You know, I’ve told some people this in the past. I’m not proud of this, but in an elders’ meeting, I highlighted the position that one guy had taken, and, you know, I actually told him—I told him, “You know, you change your mind from meeting to meeting, and I don’t understand why. But I figured it out: It’s ’cause you talked to your wife.” And I said, “Here’s the deal: Why don’t you just send your wife to the meeting?” Yeah. It went like that. It went like electricity right through the room—buzz!—like that. And then people cough a little bit and everything, say, “Well, moving on to…” But the next morning, I got a telephone call from one of the guys in the room, one of the elders, and he said, “Hey, what you did was wrong. You could have said that to that guy—and probably then you shouldn’t have done it—but you could have done it on his own. But you don’t do that in front of a group of people.” And it was a moment for me. It was a, like, “You’ve got no business doing that here in the temple” moment. You’re tempted to say, “Hey, listen: You’re a business guy. You don’t really know much about what pastoral…” You know. But in the mercy of God, I didn’t say any of that. I said, “What do you want me to do?” He said, “I want you to phone the guy up and apologize to him, and then I want you to phone me back and tell me when you’ve done it.” So I did. It was painful—painful all around.

But we need that, don’t we? Because at the end of the day, I mean, when you think about the beginning of that chapter and then you think about… This is an anachronism, but you imagine people doing, like—people, like, in Beverly Hills, you know, when you can go around and see where all the people lived: you know, “Mr. So-and-So lived over there and lived over there.” So we’ve got all these guys on donkeys, and they’re all going around, and someone says, “And that big place up there on the hill, that’s where Uzziah lived.”

“Oh, that’s where he lived? Well, where did he die?”

“Well, he actually died down there. There’s a shack down at the bottom of the corner. He died there. He had leprosy.”

That was the end of his story: afflicted, isolated, marginalized, buried, remembered: “He had leprosy.”

[1] Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “Speak, O Lord” (2005).

[2] 1 Timothy 4:13 (ESV).

[3] See James 4:14.

[4] See Isaiah 40:6; 1 Peter 1:24.

[5] Psalm 121:1–2 (NIV).

[6] Psalm 19:7 (ESV).

[7] See 2 Chronicles 25:2.

[8] Philippians 3:10 (KJV).

[9] 2 Chronicles 26:5 (NIV).

[10] Joshua 14:10–11 (paraphrased).

[11] See 1 Corinthians 10:13.

[12] Walter Wangerin Jr., “Fights Unfought, Forgiveness Forgone,” in Ragman and Other Cries of Faith (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), 126–27. Paraphrased.

[13] Paul Anka, “My Way” (1969). Lyrics lightly altered.

[14] See Luke 19:26.

[15] Daniel 4:30 (paraphrased).

[16] A. A. Milne, “Bad Sir Brian Botany” (1924).

[17] Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV).

[18] The Westminster Confession of Faith 13.2.

[19] James Taylor, “That’s Why I’m Here” (1985).

[20] See Proverbs 29:5.

[21] John 14:12 (paraphrased).