Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 704
Delivered on Sunday Morning, August 5, 1866
“At that time Berodach-Baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present unto Hezekiah, for he heard that Hezekiah had been sick. And Hezekiah was attentive to them, and showed them all the house of his treasures; the silver and gold, and the spices and precious ointment, and all his armory; all that was found among his treasures. There was nothingin his house or all his dominion that Hezekiah did not show them.” 2 Kings 20:12,13.
AND what of that? Was it not the most natural thing in all the world to do? Who among us would not have shown the strangers over our house, and our garden, and our library, and have pointed out to them any little treasures and curiosities which we might happen to possess? And what if Hezekiah was somewhat proud of his wealth? Was it not a most natural pride that he, who was a monarch of so small a territory, should nevertheless be able, by economy and good government, to accumulate so large and varied a treasure? Did it not show that he was prudent and thrifty? And might he not commend himself as an example to the Babylonian ambassadors by showing what these virtues had done for him?
Exactly so. This is just as man sees. But God sees after another sort: “Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.” Things are not to God as they seem to us. Actions which apparently, and upon the surface, and even so far as human judgment can go, may appear to be either indifferent or even laudable, may seem to God to be so hateful that His anger may burn against them! We look upon a needle, and to our naked eye it is as smooth as glass, but when we put it under the microscope it appears at once to be as rough as a raw bar of iron.
It is much after this manner with our actions. They may seem in our own judgments, and in the judgments of our fellow creatures to be as bright and smooth as the needle for their excellence. But when they come under the inspection of the all-seeing God they are full of all manner of roughness of sin. Our lilies may be the Lord’s nettles, and our gardens nothing better than a wilderness in His sight.
Yet another reflection which strikes one at the very first blush of this affair, namely, that God has a different rule for judging His children’s doings from that which He applies to the actions of strangers. I can believe that if Hezekiah had sent his ambassadors to Berodach-Baladan, that heathen monarch might have shown the Jewish ambassadors over all his treasures without any sort of sin. God would not have been provoked to anger, nor would a Prophet have uttered so much as a word of remonstrance or of threat—but Hezekiah is not like Berodach-Baladan—he must not do as the Babylonians may do.
Baladan is but a serf in God’s kingdom, and Hezekiah is a prince! The one is an alien, and the other is a dear and much-cherished child. We have all different modes of dealing with men according to their relation to us. If a stranger should speak against you in the street you would not feel it—you would scarcely be angry even though the statement might be libelous. But if it were the wife of your bosom it would sting you to the heart, or if your child should slander you it would cut you to the quick. When we admit persons into intimacy and reveal our hearts to them, we expect them to act toward us with a tenderness and a delicacy which it were utterly unreasonable to expect in strangers. And we judge their actions by a peculiar standard—we weigh, as it were, the actions of ordinary men in the common rough scales which would not turn with an ounce or even a pound—but the doings of our friends we weigh in such sensitive balances that even though it were but a feather from the wing of a fly the scale would turn.
It is a solemn thing to be a favorite of Heaven, for where another man may sin with impunity, the beloved of God will not offend without grievous chastisement. If you lie in the bosom of Heaven you must take care that your soul is chaste towards God. If you are favored with the secret of the Most High you must peculiarly be among them that fear Him—for if not, He will say unto you as He said to His favored Israel—“You only have I known of all the nations of the earth, therefore will I punish you for your iniquities.”
It might be treason in a courtier to speak of the king us a stranger might safely do. And he who is admitted into the cabinet must not only be beyond fault in his loyalty, but even beyond suspicion. We remark, then, that the act of Hezekiah here recorded is not, upon the surface, a sinful one, but that the sin is to be found, not so much in the action itself as in his motives of which we cannot be judges—but which God very accurately judged, and very strictly condemned. And again, we remark that this sin of Hezekiah might not have been sin in others at all. Even with the same motive, if done by others, it might not have so provoked God.