In prosperity be humble before God

In prosperity, give thanks to God with humility and fear lest by pride you abuse God’s benefits and so offend him (King St. Louis of France)

In adversity, it’s easy to be humble before God as you know that your ability cannot save you. You therefore come in prayer and in deep respect before God for your breakthrough or miracle. One of the reasons why non Christians get miracles when they pray to Jesus Christ is because they know that they have expended the last straw and have nothing left to save them. So acknowledging their helplessness, they usually pray to Jesus saying they don’t have anything to deserve a miracle but come humble appealing to his mercy.

Now contrast this with people who weren’t the best of moral men and had prosperity. How due to their pride in themselves they didn’t give God the honor that he deserves and by this they later fell into great trouble. Let me give you some examples of three kings mentioned in the Bible where their wrong attitude towards God became their undoing.

King Solomon

King Solomon of Israel was abundantly rich. He had loads and loads of gold and precious stones. Yet in his defiant and ungodly ambition to be great, he multiplied horses which was forbidden for a king of Israel. Deuteronomy 17:16 says that, “The king must not build up a large stable of horses for himself or send his people to Egypt to buy horses, for the LORD has told you, ‘You must never return to Egypt.’ Solomon however didn’t get punished for this sin. So taking wrong advantage of this, he multiplied wives, yes and not just getting more one wife.  But that’s not the end of Solomon’s sin. By the evil influence of his wives, he built a multitude of worship centers for false gods of his wives, all over the land of Israel, in defiance of the Lord God’s commandments which is against the worship of false gods.

You can read all of 1 Kings 11 to get details on this. So in the end God judged Solomon and raised multiple adversaries against him. These were Hadad the Edomite and Rezon the son of Eliada who led their armies against Israel during this times of Solomon. That was not all, the Lord divided the kingdom of Israel, such that Jeroboam the son of Nebat got 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel for himself. The glory of Solomon was therefore diminished greatly due to his own pride in his own wisdom instead of respecting what God had told him in the Holy Scriptures.

Sennacherib the king of Assyria

There was a wicked king who was called Sennacherib king of Assyria, who achieved great victories against many kingdoms. His armed forces brutally killed many people in their evil wars. Then he turned his attention towards Israel. The Jews were dismayed when Sennacherib blasphemed against the Lord God of Israel by sending a message to the people “Who among all the gods of those nations that my fathers devoted to destruction was able to deliver his people from my hand, that your God should be able to deliver you from my hand? Now, therefore, do not let Hezekiah deceive you or mislead you in this fashion, and do not believe him, for no god of any nation or kingdom has been able to deliver his people from my hand or from the hand of my fathers. How much less will your God deliver you out of my hand!” (2 Chronicles 32:14-15)

Not only Sennacherib but also his servants gave such wicked messages to the Israelite’s. This ultimately led to the great downfall of Sennacherib which you can read as mentioned below:

Then Hezekiah the king and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, prayed because of this and cried to heaven. And the Lord sent an angel, who cut off all the mighty warriors and commanders and officers in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he came into the house of his god, some of his own sons struck him down there with the sword. (2 Chronicles 32:20-21)

The impious Herod

Herod was a king who was prosperous and wicked. He didn’t give true honor to God (read Acts 12:20-24 to get an idea about this). So an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.

Remember that whether you are a king or not you still need to be humble.Just so that no one mistakes that humility is only for kings and leaders to follow, let’s remember the following words of Jesus our Lord:

• For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 14:11)
• Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. (Matthew 23:12)

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