NOTE: This is an unedited transcript and, therefore, contains imperfections and is not for publication or quotation in whole or in part by anyone without the express written consent of Pastor Conley. The audio tape of this message delivered in the evening service on October 19, 1997, is available and may be purchased from the Church.

COMMON FLAWS IN A FAITHFUL MAN

Isaiah 39

Dr. J. Drew Conley, Pastor

Tri-City Baptist Church, Columbia, South Carolina

Matthew Henry, a minister himself whose father was also a minister (you are familiar with his name as he has written a commentary set that has proven valuable over the years), noted that, "All men, even the best men are full of infirmities and have nothing to boast of before God." If you say that to the average man, it shakes him up a bit. He may be a bit offended, or he may be a bit discouraged. But let us remember, as we approach the flaws in a faithful man, the words of Paul when he said, "I will glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ will rest upon me." (2 Corinthians 12:9). Christianity is the one religion, because it is the revealed religion—the true religion, that faces man as he is, and deals with him as he is, and explains how he is what he is and why he is what he is, and how he can be rescued from what he is.

Common flaws in a faithful man. Even a man who has been used of God and dedicated to God over the years finds there are certain kinds of sins he is easily prey to. One of the common misconceptions among believers, I believe, is that if we have served God a long time and have been used mightily of Him, that we are somehow immune from the common flaws, and that is not the case. I want us to explore this subject matter a bit through the life of Hezekiah. Chapter 39 of Isaiah: "At that time Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah: for he had heard that he had been sick, and was recovered. And Hezekiah was glad of them, and shewed them the house of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious ointment, and all the house of his armour, and all that was found in his treasures: there was nothing in his house, nor in his dominion, that Hezekiah shewed them not. Then came Isaiah the prophet unto king Hezekiah, and said unto him, What said these men? And from when came they unto thee? And Hezekiah said, They are come from a far country unto me, even from Babylon. Then said he, What have they seen in thine house? And Hezekiah answered, All that is in mine house have they seen: there is nothing among my treasures that I have not shewed them. Then said Isaiah to Hezekiah, Hear the word of the LORD of hosts: Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the LORD. And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, Good is the word of the LORD which thou has spoken. He said moreover, For there shall be peace and truth in my days." This gives us one portion of this incident in his life, and now I would like you to turn back to 2 Chronicles 32 where we have recorded the same incident, and this time we have a little more of the picture filled in for our understanding:

2 Chronicles 32:24(through 33): "In those days Hezekiah was sick to the death, and prayed unto the LORD: and he spake unto him, and he gave him a sign. But Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him; for his heart was lifted up: therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Judah and Jerusalem. Notwithstanding Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the LORD came not upon them in the days of Hezekiah. And Hezekiah had exceeding much riches and honour: and he made himself treasuries for silver, and for gold, and for precious stones, and for spices, and for shields, and for all manner of pleasant jewels; Storehouses also for the increase of corn, and wine, and oil; and stalls for all manner of beasts, and cotes for flocks. Moreover he provided him cities, and possessions of flocks and herds in abundance: for God had given him substance very much. This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works. Howbeit in the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto him to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land [that is, the wonder of his healing and the sundial going back 10 ], God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart. Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and his goodness, behold, they are written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, and in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. And Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the chiefest of the sepulchers of the sons of David: and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem did him honour at his death. And Manasseh his son reigned in his stead."

I would like you to look with me first of all this evening at "A Good Man's Folly." Chapter 32 of 2 Chronicles gives us insight on what is going on inside Hezekiah; why it was a problem for him to show the Babylon ambassadors the treasures of Jerusalem, and what motivated him to do it in the first place. We might look at it from our perspective, knowing that they were going to be sent to Babylonian captivity in the years to come, and say, "What a foolish political move." And yet it was not so much politics that was the issue here as it was the state of his own heart. We are given the key to it in verse 25: "Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him: for his heart was lifted up: therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Judah and Jerusalem."

It is often the case that a good man will fall into pride because of God's blessing. Now, in the life of Hezekiah I believe we sometimes draw the wrong conclusions from what God has recorded. Because these incidents follow upon his prayer and God's answer to his prayer to heal him, there are many that draw the lesson that "you better be careful what you pray for, you might get it." Certainly there is some validity to that, we should always pray that the Lord's will be done—"not my will, but Thine be done"—but, nowhere in the chronicle of Hezekiah's life do we find any kind of reprimand for what he prayed, or that he prayed. The fact is, as we have explored in previous weeks, if you can't pray for a terminal illness, what can you pray for? God instructs us to pray for those things, and it was certainly God's liberty to heal or not to heal, and God chose to give him a sign. Unlike his father, Ahaz, who refused to even ask of God a sign because he wasn't willing to trust God for it, Hezekiah did ask God for a sign and God granted him that sign, and God blessed him because of his prayer. It is after his healing from this prayer that he invited the Babylonians. It is after his healing that his son, Manasseh, came along (he began his reign at age 12—it is possible that is when he began his co-regent reign, not his reign alone).

Hezekiah's problem was not his prayer, but his pride. Whenever you are interpreting scripture, you always want to look for the author's viewpoint. You can draw all kinds of lessons from scripture. You can take a verse and preach all through it, and you have probably heard many sermons [maybe even from me] that took a verse and really explored all the possibilities of what you could preach from that verse. But when you are trying to interpret scripture, you should always look for the author's viewpoint—for what God is emphasizing and where God notes His own approval or disapproval. In the case of Hezekiah, God notes his disapproval. If God was not approving of his prayer, He could have said so. God says nothing about the prayer, in fact He honors his prayer; the problem is not his prayer, but his pride.

Extraordinary blessings from God to man often turn a man from God—that is true of the unbeliever as well. There is not a person alive today who is not enjoying the benefits that God has given him: the very breath that is in his lungs, the beating of his heart, the food that he eats, the life he enjoys, the strength he uses—all are gifts from God. The ungodly man takes it as his own and gives God no credit for it. Interestingly enough, a man who has been used of God (a man who has dedicated his life to serving God and has thus been blessed by God in extraordinary ways) often finds that on top of all the successes and the enjoying of God's blessings because of his faithfulness and because of his humbleness, he finds there is a pride that begins in his heart—a pride that ironically springs from the success that God granted him on account of his faithfulness. Pride because of God's blessings is one of those common flaws in a faithful man. As God uses you in your life, as He grants you particularly the extraordinary blessings, remember that pride will more than likely be the most common enemy you face. The blessing of failure is that it helps to kill pride. The blessing of the early days is that we have so little cause for pride. The blessing of the slow times is that we have so little cause for pride. The same thing happens with the church. One of my great fears for Tri-City Baptist Church is not that God will bless the church (I hope He will bless the church), but that as He does, and as we see more people saved, and as we see more people touched by the ministry, that we will drift into church pride. It is very rare for a church, or a person, to be blessed and not to begin to yield to this pride, as if we were the ones that created the blessing. If God ever grants that we have 1000 or 2000 or 5000 meeting together, it will not be because of us, and the church will be every bit as vulnerable as when we had 13 gathered together. Our power that matters is God, and it is the blessing of God that we covet and nothing short of that. Let us not take credit for what God has done.

The second folly, the second pitfall, that often even a faithful man falls into, and it is related to pride, it is a sister of pride, and that is a reckless effort to impress the world. God had done great things in this small area of Judah. God had saved them from Sennacherib, and more than that as we have chronicled here in the book of Chronicles, God had given great abundance to Hezekiah. No doubt Hezekiah felt some pressure to demonstrate that they weren't the "little boys on the block," that they weren't some little insignificant kingdom in the side stream of history, but they were somebody significant—significant because of God, but nonetheless significant. When these ambassadors came, and it was prompted by the way because of the miracle God had done in healing Hezekiah and with the sundial going backwards (the astrologers I am sure were particularly interested in that), Hezekiah strangely seems more concerned with showing off his riches to the ambassadors than in pointing them to God and showing them what God had done. It is common for Christians to do this. It is common for us to focus unbelievers on our worldly attainments rather than on our God. It is common for us to revel in the better home we live in now; it is common to revel in more time for vacation that we have as God gives us success; it is common for us to brag about how our kids are doing; it is common for us to find reasons for pride in all the secular attainments and to talk of those things when we rub shoulders with those who don't know the Lord. What would the Lord have us share? What would the Lord have us say to those who do not know Him? The reason for the Christian's existence is to bring glory to his God, and how many opportunities we miss to bring glory to the Lord by pointing the unbeliever to what God has done in our lives, instead of wasting so much time reveling in what does not really matter.

Pride motivated Hezekiah's effort to impress the ambassadors. It tended toward making allies by bringing these ambassadors in and showing them all these things; it tended toward making allies with an idolatrous nation; it was like "getting chummy" with the world; it was something that "smacked of" trusting the flesh and finding source of strength and pride in political strategy and monetary success, rather than in the simple reliance on God. Sometimes it seems we are embarrassed that we just simply rely on God. I believe this is one of the real reasons for the neo- evangelical movement, where they want to be considered scholarly. We don't want to say anything that would seem intolerant of those who do not believe the Bible and don't believe that it takes the sacrifice of Christ—don't believe in a "bloody" religion, don't believe in inerrancy of the scripture. We don't want them to think we are benighted in our scholarship. We do not want them to think we are not in keeping with modern developments and with the scholarship that is available. So many men have either been silent, or have given too much credence to the enemy because they are afraid to be looked down on by the world. Look, it doesn't matter. The world is passing away and the desires thereof, and we need to continue to exercise that simple reliance on God.

The one thing about pride is that it is almost always deceitful. When you are trying to impress somebody, you always misrepresent what you really are. It is good for us to keep a simplicity to our lives, just to keep it simple: that we live to honor the Lord, that we live by what God says, and people can ridicule it and may think it's "nuts," but this is the truth and we are going to walk in it. Let's not try to impress them by all the things the world finds impressive because those things aren't really the impressive things anyway. Whenever the church makes allies with the world, she opens herself up to be abused by the world. The world does not make a good ally with the church. One of the difficulties the church has found over her history is every time she sidles up the world and tries to impress the world, tries to have a little more political recognition, tries thinking she can advance the kingdom of God by making allies with those who do not know God—every time she gets burned on it. Every time the world (which is interested in something far different) ends up plundering the church, ends up ruining the church, and ends up tainting the church.

It is interesting there in Isaiah when Hezekiah is asked by Isaiah about who these people were who were coming to the kingdom, he says, "they are from a far country." In other words, "you don't have to worry about them, they are from a far country." (It reminds me of the Gibeonites and Joshua: they are from a far country, they have moldy bread and worn out shoes—no, they are your next-door neighbors.) Here these Babylonians were, at the time they weren't a major power and were trying to win their independence from Assyria—at the time it was Assyria that seemed to be the threat—and yet, naively Hezekiah seems to have no idea that the Babylonians could ever pose a threat to Judah. The letters from the Babylonian king seem a harmless inquiry into Hezekiah's healing and, evidently, Hezekiah was pretty impressed (the king of Babylon heard about this—we are getting some recognition). You know how we are, we get some "good press" and we say, "Hey, they are finally waking up; they are saying some good things about Christians. Yeah, they are saying good things about Christians. It's about time they quit making us look like we are out of step." Don't be so happy about it, because in general the world doesn't understand, and it is a great temptation when the world smiles, and often the church is ruined more by the world's smiles than by its frowns—by its love than by its hatred.

The letters from the Babylonian king seemed to be a harmless interest in Hezekiah's healing and the miracle connected with it, but there was secret political objective in it in trying to get Hezekiah involved in throwing off the Assyrian yoke—they were looking for allies, and it turned out to be far more than that. When Hezekiah showed them all the treasures it also went into the ledger book as a kingdom that wasn't just a by-the-way little kingdom, but a kingdom we could take over easy and they have a lot of treasure and we want to make sure we get it. And they remembered, and one day they took it all. As Kylan Elledge [sp?] put it, "This self-satisfied display of worthless earthly possessions would bring its own punishment in their loss, and this obsequious (means ‘cringing and servile, making over these men like they are somebodies') suing for admiration and favor on the part of strangers would be followed by a plundering and enslaving on the part of those very same strangers whose envy Hezekiah had excited." I like what Matthew Henry says on this: "Babylon will ruin those that are fond of Babylon." The world will destroy and ruin those who are fond of the world. Don't put too great a premium on what the world considers valuable. Don't measure your success by whether you can impress them. If you get into that trap, you are in trouble and it will bring you down.

When we look at this, we say: "That just ruins my day! Here is a faithful man with all these chapters in the Bible devoted to him, and he has got these common flaws." In a marriage when you find out your knight in shining armor has just all kinds of flaws, it ruins your life. Why does God allow Hezekiah to be this way. Why is that so many men and women used of God at some point or another of their lives are exposed to have common flaws? It would seem God would want to maintain this aura of perfection. Particularly in the early days of our church, I would often think what a pain it was that when you became a pastor you didn't become perfect! You are supposed to be shepherding all these people—many of whom could tell you more about life than what you could tell them—but God doesn't grant perfection. He grants special unction, but he doesn't grant perfection. There are still common flaws. Why would God allow these things?

I want us to look in these passages at not only a good man's folly, but at a wise God's purpose. Why did God allow this folly on Hezekiah's part. First we learn according to 2 Chronicles 32:31 the reason God allowed this folly. Hezekiah could have figured this out, but why did God allow him to do what he did? "Howbeit in the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto him to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left him, (Wait a minute! God is not supposed to forsake me—that is what He did, He left him. Why? Have you ever felt that God has abandoned you? Ever felt in the midst of a particular situation, you did not have the wisdom of God? Ever looked back on a day, or a week, or a month, or a year, and said ‘Why in the world did I ever do that? How come You didn't keep me from doing such a stupid thing?') to try him (just like you would sift wheat, just like you would try metal by putting it in the furnace to reveal the dross that is there), that he might know all that was in his heart." Now, God knew what was in his heart. Hezekiah didn't. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). The fact is that there is an awful lot of the time that I do not know my own heart. There is an awful lot of the time I overestimate how godly I am, and I underestimate how wicked I am. Man is prone to that, and that is the reason a lot of people never receive Christ: they overestimate how good they are, and underestimate how bad they are. They really don't get down to what they really are inside. God allowed his folly to reveal his heart. This is God's purpose on an individual level, on a personal level, on Hezekiah's level. It is not that God needed to find out, but that Hezekiah needed to see what was in his heart.

Remember in Isaiah 38:15, Hezekiah's prayer (and this is not long after that prayer): "What shall I say (and this is right after he learned he would be healed) he hath both spoken unto me and himself hath done it, I shall go softly all my years in bitterness of my soul." The idea is that he would go softly all his years in humbleness of soul. After God has rescued me in this way, I am humbled and I will never forget what God has done; I will never forget that I could be buried in the sepulchers of the kings right now, but God has extended my life; I didn't deserve it. Yet here we find within a few months probably, and certainly not more than a year or so, here he is again not rendering again according to the benefit done him, but his heart is lifted up. He was not insincere when he prayed that prayer; he just did not know how proud his heart could be.

So often there are those secret faults that we are not even aware of. The Psalmist says "Cleanse thou me from secret faults." With all his success, with all his godliness, he needed to remember just how flawed he was and how foolish he could be. As Matthew Henry put it, "What need have great men and good men and useful men to study their own infirmities and follies." How indebted they are to God's intervening grace. We need to remember the words of the song, "Thy grace has led me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home"—things I don't deserve. This was a "heart" sin that was revealed. Hezekiah did not go out and commit adultery with someone—in fact, what Hezekiah did was probably debated in the kingdom as to the wisdom of it. It is only in hindsight knowing the Babylonians took over the kingdom, and knowing from the prophet that they were going to, that we say "Yes, this was really foolish." We would not know necessarily that Hezekiah was a proud man; Hezekiah would not know that he was a proud man; this was a foolish blunder—not the grave kind of sin that removes a man from ministry, not the kind of sin that sends letters here and yon that say "Did you hear what happened to so-and-so? Did you hear what he did? Did you hear..." No, this seemed like a simple mistake, a foolish mistake. But the mistake happened because of what was wrong with his heart, and it teaches us that God is concerned about what is going on in my heart, not just whether or not I keep my act cleaned up on the outside, not just whether I have the outside of the dish spick-and-span, not just whether I keep away from the gross kind of sins—and certainly we pray that God will keep us from those too—but God looks on my heart. God wants a heart that is right with him, because my heart being right with him is critical to my being used of God.

It is easy to underestimate how wicked our hearts can be, especially after enjoying a personal history of being used of God and of being dedicated to God. Hopefully, by the time you reach the end of your life, if you have a long life, you will have a whole chronicle of God's interventions, God's blessings; that you will have a long chronicle of being used by God—that was your heart's desire, and that was what God granted. Remember, it is easy to slip into pride, and you do stupid things just so God can reveal what is still there in the heart. Why would God do that? Is it just because he likes to expose people? Just to show how rotten they still are even though God still used them? Does He have this cruel streak in Him that He wanted to hold Hezekiah up for ridicule? No. We know that is not correct; that is not in keeping with the character of God. Why did He do it? I think the answer is found in verse 26: "Notwithstanding Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem." The end result was to provoke repentance from Hezekiah. Hezekiah would never have repented of his pride if he had not known it was there. Part of walking with God, part of communing with Him, part of growing in the Lord, is that as you go along He reveals more about yourself that you didn't know. You can't deal with what you don't know, and part of living life is finding out more and more just how gracious God has been to use you at all. Hezekiah had a real eyeopener here: he found out just how proud he was and how foolish he could be. God used it to cleanse his heart of this secret fault he didn't even know was there.

There is another level of God's purpose, and that was the national level. He allowed Hezekiah's folly in order to punish His people. You will note in verse 25: "therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Judah and Jerusalem" and in verse 26: "Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the LORD came not upon them in the days of Hezekiah." It was not just Hezekiah's problem, and so we don't read this passage and say, "God punished all of Jerusalem for the sin of this one man." God does not punish one person because of the sin of another—not judicially, however our sin affects other people—but He does not punish one person for the sin of another. We each stand before the Lord. When you get to the life of Manasseh, you find the people are quick to go back into idolatry (verses 9 and 10). "So Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the LORD has destroyed before the children of Israel. And the LORD spake to Manasseh, and to his people: but they would not hearken." And in verse 17 even after Manasseh repents, "Nevertheless the people did sacrifice still in the high places (they still had this ‘hybrid' religion, worshiping the Lord in a worldly way), yet unto the LORD their God only." No one but a prophet of God could have foretold that the threat would come not from Assyria, but from Babylon, and the Babylonian captivity and the judgment that God predicts here is not a judgment purely on Hezekiah, it is a judgment many people deserved, that a whole nation brought upon themselves. Hezekiah's life is woven into the life of the nation, and the judgment that is pronounced is a judgment not just for Hezekiah, but for the nation as well. God allowed Hezekiah's folly in order to punish His people.

Sometimes we look at the foolishness of a particular leader, and we say, "God has got to bring judgment on him for that foolishness." Remember that often a foolish leader, or foolish decisions by a wise leader, are related to a people who are far from God. Usually there is a correspondence between foolishness of leadership and folly of God's people. Let us not be those who say, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." That is a proverb that was popular in those days according to the book of Ezekiel. God doesn't judge people for the sins of somebody else—God is just, He is righteous. When there are foolish leaders, they often are leading foolish people. God allowed his folly in order to punish his people.

We see in this passage as well, besides a good man's folly and a wise God's purpose, we see a loving God's mercy. Verse 26 when "Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, (so) [we find] that the wrath of the LORD came not upon them in the days of Hezekiah." He was granted a "stay of execution" if you will. God rewarded repentance by delaying judgment. What is interesting when you chronicle the people of God, every time somebody repented, He delays judgment. Even those in Ninevah (you remember when we studied the book of Jonah) even the Assyrians when they repented, God delayed their judgment—and they were well deserving of judgment—but when they repented before God, God delayed the judgment over 100 years. I don't know where you are in your life, or at what juncture—you may have done some real foolish things in recent days—it may have revealed to you your pride, or the wickedness of your heart in a way you never knew it before, and in a way you really wish you didn't know how bad you could be—God means it for good. God would like to see from you a repentance of heart. Whenever He reveals to you the iniquity of your heart, God want you to respond by saying, "Lord, I admit." That is what confession is: it is saying the same thing as God. It is saying the same thing as God, it is saying, "God, I see it. I see it, God. Forgive me and cleanse me." And God says that rather than regarding that iniquity in our hearts, if we confess it and come clean with it, will confess our sins, He is faithful and He is just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He does it for individuals, and He does it for nations.

God is a merciful God. Even at the very last hairs-breadth of time before judgment falls, God is a merciful God; and that is why people who have lived very wicked lives and receive God on their deathbeds, God accepts. That is why those who have totally ruined their lives, God accepts when they repent. That is why people who have served the Lord for many years and have turned to some kind of sin that has ruined their ministry, ruined their lives and ruined the lives of those around them, when they repent, God accepts them. That is a great thing. You see, God is concerned about your heart. God is concerned about restoring you to fellowship with Him. No matter where you are: you may not even know the Lord, you may never have received Christ as Saviour. God's desire for you is for you to repent: to admit your need, to admit your need of forgiveness, and your need of grace and mercy from the Lord, and He will not cast you out; He will receive you and make you a son or daughter; He will give you eternal life. Perhaps you are a believer, you have known the Lord for many years, you have been used of the Lord, yet you have done some really foolish things. God's desire for you, He has revealed it to you so you might turn around and get back into fellowship with Him. The common flaws of a faithful man need not be permanent (they need not destroy his life) for there is a God who has a purpose and a plan—there is a God who has mercy toward all who repent.

Click here to return to the Knight Family Home Page