The High Cost of a High Heart Text: 2 Chronicles 32:24-26
Introduction: The Unseen Enemy
We are often very good at identifying our external enemies. When Sennacherib and his Assyrian hordes are parked outside the city walls, blaspheming God and threatening total destruction, it is a straightforward matter to know who the bad guys are. We can see their siege engines, we can hear their taunts. In the previous verses, we saw King Hezekiah in his finest hour, trusting God, praying earnestly, and watching Yahweh deliver Jerusalem in a spectacular and miraculous fashion. The angel of the Lord went out and turned the entire Assyrian army into a graveyard overnight. It was a stunning victory, a vindication of faith.
But the Bible is a relentlessly honest book. It does not give us airbrushed heroes. It shows us that the most dangerous enemy is often not the one outside the gates, but the one that has set up a throne room inside our own hearts. After the great victory comes the great test. After the astounding deliverance comes the subtle temptation. And the name of that internal enemy, that unseen usurper, is pride. Pride is the original sin, the root of all others. It is the desire to be our own god, to take the credit that belongs to God alone, and to live as though we are the center of the universe. Hezekiah, the great and godly king, faced down the world's superpower, but he very nearly was undone by the pride of his own heart.
This passage is a potent warning for us. It is especially a warning for those who have experienced God's blessing. When God answers our prayers, when He delivers us from sickness, when He gives us success and prosperity, that is precisely when we are in the most spiritual danger. The blessing itself can become the snare. The gift can make us forget the Giver. This account of Hezekiah's brush with spiritual death is a mercy to us, because it maps out the treacherous terrain of a proud heart, but it also shows us the only way back: the path of humble repentance.
The Text
In those days Hezekiah became sick to the point of death; and he prayed to Yahweh, and Yahweh spoke to him and gave him a miraculous sign.
But Hezekiah gave no return for the benefit he received, because his heart was proud; therefore wrath came on him and on Judah and Jerusalem.
However, Hezekiah humbled the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of Yahweh did not come on them in the days of Hezekiah.
(2 Chronicles 32:24-26 LSB)
Sickness, Prayer, and a Sign (v. 24)
The narrative pivots from a national crisis to a personal one.
"In those days Hezekiah became sick to the point of death; and he prayed to Yahweh, and Yahweh spoke to him and gave him a miraculous sign." (2 Chronicles 32:24)
Hezekiah, fresh from a monumental victory, is now on his deathbed. This is a stark reminder that no amount of earthly success can exempt us from our mortality. God, in His providence, often uses physical affliction to get our attention, to remind us of our utter dependence upon Him. Sickness has a way of stripping away all our pretensions of self-sufficiency. You can be a king, but if your body is shutting down, your crown and your throne are of no help to you.
What does Hezekiah do? He does what he did when the Assyrians were at the gate: "he prayed to Yahweh." This is the right and proper reflex of a man of God. He turns to the only one who has the power of life and death. The parallel account in Isaiah 38 tells us he turned his face to the wall and wept bitterly. This was not a stoic, stiff-upper-lip prayer. This was a desperate, heartfelt plea from a man who knew he was at the end of his rope.
And God responds. He "spoke to him and gave him a miraculous sign." God is merciful. He hears the prayers of His people. He sent the prophet Isaiah to tell Hezekiah not only that he would be healed, but that he would be given fifteen more years of life. The sign was extraordinary: God made the shadow on the sundial go backward ten steps. This was a direct, supernatural intervention into the created order, a sign that the God who controls the cosmos could certainly heal one man's body. This was grace upon grace. Hezekiah was delivered from his sickness by the sheer, unmerited favor of God.
Pride, Ingratitude, and Wrath (v. 25)
But the response to this grace is where the trouble begins. Verse 25 is one of the saddest verses in the life of this good king.
"But Hezekiah gave no return for the benefit he received, because his heart was proud; therefore wrath came on him and on Judah and Jerusalem." (2 Chronicles 32:25 LSB)
Hezekiah's response was not what it should have been. The Hebrew says he did not repay "according to the benefit done to him." He received a mountain of grace and returned a molehill of gratitude. Why? The text is explicit: "because his heart was proud." The word for proud here means to be high or exalted. His heart was lifted up. He had survived the Assyrians. He had survived a fatal illness. He had seen God literally turn back time for him. And the result was that he began to think he was something special.
This is the insidious nature of pride. It takes the gifts of God and treats them as personal achievements. It metabolizes grace into self-congratulation. The account in 2 Kings 20 tells us what this pride looked like in practice. When envoys came from Babylon, ostensibly to congratulate him on his recovery, Hezekiah puffed out his chest and showed them everything. He showed them his armory, his treasury, all his silver and gold. He was showing off. He was acting like a man who had built all this by his own strength, forgetting that every ounce of that silver and every breath in his lungs was a gift from the God he was failing to honor.
And notice the consequence: "therefore wrath came on him and on Judah and Jerusalem." This is a critical principle of covenant theology. The heart of the king affects the entire nation. A leader's private sin has public consequences. Because Hezekiah's heart was lifted up, God's wrath was kindled against the whole kingdom. This is the opposite of what happened with the Assyrians; there, Hezekiah's faith led to national deliverance. Here, his pride leads to national judgment. God announced through Isaiah that all the treasures Hezekiah had boasted in would one day be carried off to Babylon. His pride was a preview of their coming exile.
Humility, Repentance, and Mercy (v. 26)
But the story does not end there. Hezekiah had a fatal disease in his body, and God healed him. Now he has a fatal disease in his soul, and God provides the only cure.
"However, Hezekiah humbled the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of Yahweh did not come on them in the days of Hezekiah." (2 Chronicles 32:26 LSB)
When confronted with his sin by the prophet, Hezekiah did not double down. He did not make excuses. He did not blame the Babylonians for being nosy. He "humbled the pride of his heart." He took the high thing in his heart and he brought it low. This is the essence of repentance. It is agreeing with God about the nature of your sin. It is to stop defending, justifying, and explaining, and to simply confess. He saw his pride for the ugly, treasonous thing it was, and he humbled himself before the Lord.
And notice, the people joined him in this. "Both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem." Just as his sin threatened them all, his repentance included them all. This corporate repentance is a beautiful picture of a people rightly related to their king and their God. They saw the danger and they turned from it together.
The result was mercy. God is a God who delights to show mercy. The sentence was not revoked, but it was postponed. "The wrath of Yahweh did not come on them in the days of Hezekiah." God stayed His hand of judgment for a generation because of their genuine repentance. This shows us that repentance is powerful. It avails much. It doesn't manipulate God, but it appeals to His covenant faithfulness and His merciful character. God resists the proud, but He gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). Hezekiah experienced this truth firsthand, twice. First he was humbled by sickness and received grace. Then he was humbled by his sin and received grace again.
Conclusion: The Daily War
The story of Hezekiah is our story. We all have a little Sennacherib in our hearts, a proud king who wants to take credit for God's victories and boast in God's gifts. We are all susceptible to the sickness of a high heart, especially after we have been greatly blessed.
What is the lesson for us? It is to cultivate a heart of gratitude. The antidote to pride is thanksgiving. When we are constantly and consciously giving God the glory for every good thing, it is very difficult for pride to find a foothold. Hezekiah's sin was that he "gave no return for the benefit." He broke the circuit of grace. God gives, and we are to give back thanks, praise, and glory. When we do this, we keep our hearts low and our eyes fixed on Him.
But when we fail, as we all do, the path back is the one Hezekiah took. It is the path of humbling ourselves. We must not wait for God to humble us through disaster, though He will if He must. We are to humble ourselves. This means confessing our pride as sin. Call it what God calls it. Don't call it self-esteem; call it arrogance. Don't call it confidence; call it conceit. Drag it into the light.
Ultimately, our only hope is in the one King who never had a proud thought. Jesus Christ, who possessed all the treasures of heaven, did not show them off, but "emptied Himself, by taking the form of a bond-servant" (Philippians 2:7). He humbled Himself all the way to the cross. Hezekiah's pride brought the threat of wrath on his people. Christ's humility took the full cup of God's wrath for His people. Hezekiah repented and postponed the judgment. Christ's righteousness removes our judgment forever.
Therefore, when we feel the poison of pride rising in our hearts, we must look to the cross. The cross is the ultimate humiliation of all human boasting. It is where our pride was crucified with Him. And in looking to Him, we find not only the forgiveness for our pride, but the power to walk in true humility, giving all thanks and all glory to the God who gives us every good and perfect gift.