It can get a little discouraging to see how many towering biblical figures fail to cross the finish line of faith. Noah responds to God with audacious faith, building an ark despite scoffers and years of waiting. Yet his story ends with him lying drunk and disgraced in his tent. Moses, the man who led God’s people out of the worst slavery they had ever known, couldn’t go into the Promised Land because of his sin. Even David—a man “after God’s own heart”—steals another man’s wife and murders hundreds to cover it up. He ends his life in a desperate civil war with his own son.
Like us, many characters in the Bible start out with excellent intentions. And many of them even continue in faith for a while. But it’s tough to end well.
King Hezekiah offers a tragic example of this. Despite seeing one God’s most miraculous deliverances ever recorded–escape from Sennacherib’s 250,000+ strong army (2 Kings 19), without a single casualty, a battle military historian William McNeill calls ‘the most important battle that never happened–the conclusion of his life gives us a picture of a man utterly consumed with himself. The end of his life gives us both a warning and a promise.
1. Hezekiah’s End Gives Us A Warning
In 2 Kings 20, King Hezekiah contracts a life-threatening illness. It looks like the end for Hezekiah, especially when the prophet Isaiah stops by to announce, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover’” (2 Kings 20:1). Hezekiah is unusually devastated by this news: he wept morbidly and begged God for an extension to his life. Yet God again honors Hezekiah’s bold prayer, giving Hezekiah another 15 years.
While his body improves, the speed of his spiritual decline escalates in a hurry. When the king of Babylon hears about Hezekiah’s miraculous recovery, he sends some men to congratulate him on the healing. Instead of giving glory to God for his deliverance, however, Hezekiah shows off all of the treasures he’s accumulated over his life (2 Kings 20:13). He’s taken God’s favor and twisted it into an opportunity to display his own pride.
It gets worse. When the Babylonians leave, Isaiah lets Hezekiah know that his pride will have devastating consequences: all of Hezekiah’s treasures will one day be ransacked, and his own sons will be taken, castrated, and forced to live in exile in Babylon. Hezekiah’s response is one of the most chilling in all of Scripture: “Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?” (2 Kings 20:19) In other words, “Who cares? As long as things go well with me, that’s all that matters.”
Hezekiah had passed the test of adversity (hoping in God alone when he was outmanned more than 20 to 1 by Sennacherib), but he failed the test of prosperity.
He shows us that it is so easy to receive the blessings of God and make them all about us. God blesses us, miraculously, with life, with prosperity, with family, with salvation from sin . . . and all we can then think about is our comfort, our needs, our glory.
Tragically, many of God’s people end their lives just like Hezekiah. They forget that God blesses us to be a blessing. They may never say it out loud, but their lives scream, “Who cares about anyone else? As long as my needs are taken care of and I die happy, it’s all fine! So what if kids in my city are growing up without mothers or fathers? So what if people around the world are dying without hearing the gospel? I’m going to heaven, so it’s all good.”
Don’t waste your success. It may not look like it, but your prosperity is a test. Don’t use it to stockpile luxuries for yourself. Use it to direct others to the God whose grace led you to where you are. Remember: Hezekiah’s evil wasn’t immorality or murder or overt idolatry. It was simply not leveraging his success to give glory to God.
2. Hezekiah’s End Gives Us A Promise
Hezekiah’s tragic end, like the end of every king in the Bible, points us to the need for a greater king, one who would not think of his own interests, but of the interests of others’. Where Hezekiah failed, King Jesus would succeed.
When Hezekiah was faced with impending death, he asked God for healing—but he eventually died. When Jesus was faced with impending death, he was brutally tortured and killed—but he eventually rose to life. When Hezekiah heard of coming destruction, he shrugged, “Who cares about future generations, as long as I’m okay?” When Jesus was faced with the destruction of our sin, he laid down his life so that future generations could live. In the end, Hezekiah didn’t care about the fate of his own children; but Jesus eagerly laid down his life and tasted death for his enemies.
Those of us who have tasted that grace can never respond like Hezekiah. As Paul would say, we who live by his death no longer live for ourselves, but for the one by whose death we live (2 Cor 5:15). God has promised to transform us from the inside out. The gospel takes our hearts—prone to follow Hezekiah—and molds them into hearts that beat for him. We don’t have to will ourselves across the finish line of faith; the nail-scarred hands will carry us.
