God’s Word for You
2 Chronicles 26:1-5 God made him prosper
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, May 5, 2025
26:1 All the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king instead of his father Amaziah. 2 He was the one who rebuilt Elat and restored it to Judah after King Amaziah slept with his fathers. 3 Uzziah was sixteen years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jecoliah of Jerusalem. 4 He did what was right in the sight of the LORD, just as his father Amaziah had done. 5 He was one to seek God during the lifetime of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God. As long as he sought the LORD, God made him prosper.
We have already seen how Uzziah (the usual name for Azariah, Amaziah’s son) was placed on the throne when his father was captured. The account goes on now to show us that he rebuilt the city of Elat and restored it as a possession of Judah. Elat was a port city on the north shore of the Red Sea where Solomon built a fleet of trading ships (2 Chronicles 8:17). Jehoshaphat, about a century before Uzziah, had also built a fleet of ships there, but they were wrecked by the Lord because he had built them in association with the Israelite king (2 Chronicles 20:35-36). Uzziah built up Elat without any such help. Elat remained quiet historically until the time of the Crusades. In 1167 AD, the Muslims under Saladin captured Elat and maintained control of the port for most of the rest of the time of the Crusades, blocking the southern sea route for the Christians for hundreds of years.
Our author makes Uzziah sound like a good and godly man, and for the most part he was. Another Zechariah appears, who cannot be the same prophet who was murdered by Uzziah’s grandfather Joash. This advisor was very much like Jehoiada. But Zechariah died, and Uzziah made a serious sinful error. Did that one error change the Lord’s opinion of him?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Uzziah was the third King of Judah in a row who began well but then slid into sin. Joash had the old high priest Jehoiada to guide him, but as soon as Jehoiada died, Joash fell into idolatry. Then Amaziah began well, but as soon as he plundered the idols of Edom, he fell into idolatry just as his father had done. He was even forced to run away and hide in Lachish, but that didn’t stop the warriors of Judah from finding him and putting him to death for his idolatry. The only thing that separated those men from wicked Athaliah, the grandmother and great-grandmother and would-be murderer of those kings was that she never started with faith at all. But now Uzziah has begun well, too—but our author has hinted that he, too, is not going to end well in some way. There will, mercifully, be a difference for Uzziah, and we will get to that in due time.
Solomon, Uzziah’s ancestor, had said, “Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain” (Psalm 127:1). If the Lord places a strawberry on the table, what will happen to that strawberry? If it sits for a while, and not very long, it will start to spoil, and pretty soon it will rot. It doesn’t even take a single day for it to happen. They rot even in the refrigerator. But what happens if you take that strawberry and you wash it as soon as you bring it inside the house? Not just with water, but with vinegar. And you can even wash the vinegar off—the change will have taken place. That berry will last longer. It’s been preserved. Not forever, mind you, but far longer than if it goes unwashed. This is a little bit like the way things are with us. Left by ourselves, we are already rotting and dying. But washed in our baptism, and preserved with the cleansing of the wine and bread of the Lord’s blood and body in the sacrament, and our faith is preserved, built up, and strengthened. And unlike a strawberry, where one vinegar washing is all it gets, we are special. Oh, we’re not special by ourselves any more than any one berry is special all by itself. But our Lord preserves us with baptism that is for life, and he keeps building up our faith and forgiving our sins through the Lord’s Supper every time we take it. If strawberries had that available to them, why would we ever keep them away from it? Yet we have it available to us, and our children do, too. Why would we keep them, or ourselves, away from it?
Don’t get yourself into church and into Bible study because you feel guilty not to. Get there because you already feel guilty about your sin, and you want the forgiveness that Jesus brings. Get there because you love your Savior, because you long for the drink of the living water that flows from Jesus to everlasting life (Revelation 7:17). Don’t go to earn anything, but to receive everything.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.