Sermon Tone Analysis

ATTENTION

You’ve all met that guy before, haven’t you.

He swaggers and struts, telling you how great he is, never realizing how nauseating his arrogance really is.

He’s got a problem, but he probably doesn’t see it.

It’s that terrible “p” word.

It’s pride.

Now you see a guy like that and you wonder, “How can any human being possibly get so full of himself?

Surely,” we think, “he can’t possibly be that stuck on himself.

How is it possible to be so boringly self-important?”

Well, it’s much easier than we realize.

It’s so easy that everyone wrestles with it in one context or another.

In fact, whether we realize it or not, pride is cyclical.

The sin of pride follows a predictable pattern.

Chan Gailey experienced it.

He coached the Yellow Jackets of Georgia Tech, but his lesson came when he was the coach of Alabama’s Troy State and that small college was playing for a National Championship.

The week before the big game, he was headed to the practice field when a secretary called him back to take a phone call.

Somewhat irritated, Gailey told her to take a message because he was on his way to practice.

She responded, "But it's Sports Illustrated."

"I'll be right there," he said.

As he made his way to the building, he began to think about the upcoming article.

It would be great publicity for a small school like Troy State to be in Sports Illustrated.

As he got closer, he realized that a three-page article would not be sufficient to tell the whole story.

Coming even closer to his office, he started thinking that he might be on the cover.

"Should I pose or go with an action shot," he wondered.

His head was spinning with all of the possibilities.

When he picked up the phone and said hello, the person asked, "Is this Chan Gailey?"

"Yes, it is," he replied confidently.

"This is Sports Illustrated, and we're calling to let you know that your subscription is running out.

Are you interested in renewing?"

There’s at least part of the cycle of pride: Humility leads to blessing which leads to pride which leads eventually back to humility.

NEED

And the truth is whether we coach a football team or work for the Sanitation department, pride is a problem for everyone of us.

No one you know doesn’t, at some point, struggle with their pride.

Now, one reason that it is such a struggle is because we don’t really understand its cycle.

That’s why I want you to listen this morning.

You may be in the middle of the cycle, just about ready to explode into full-blown arrogance.

Your head may already be starting to swell and you don’t even know it.

Listen and see if the cycle of pride might be working in your life.

And, quite honestly, when some of us hear the cycle, we’ll find it very familiar.

We may have intrinsically known for a long time that we rode the rollercoaster of pretension but we have failed to get off.

You see, the purpose in our time together this morning isn’t just to understand the cycle of pride.

We want to break it.

TRAN

The question really is how.

How can we break the cycle of pride that operates in all of us.

There was a king of Judah that can really show us how.

You can avoid the cycle of pride when you

DIV 1: UNDERSTAND IT.

Four steps define the cyle of pride and you see them all in this chapter we are looking at this morning.

It’s 2 Chronicles 26.

There we meet a king named Uzziah.

He cycles through pride in a very telling fashion and his story helps us understand its steps.

In this cycle of pride, humility leads to blessing.

Uzziah has a humble beginning.

He starts his reign at the tender age of 16.

V 1 says: “Now all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king instead of his father Amaziah.”

This seems to have happened even though his father was still alive.

From this unlikely beginning, he rose to power and God blessed him.

V 3 tells us that he reigned 52 years . . .

quite a feat in such days of instability.

The Bible also adds in v 4 that God “made him prosper.”

God greatly blessed him.

For one thing, God made him successful in war.

V. 2 says that he subdued Elath which had been lost since Solomon’s reign.

This was a strategic port at the head of the gulf, critical to the control of seaborne commerce.

V 8 tells us that His fame spread as far as the entrace of Egypt and he became exceedingly strong.

In fact, if you combined the territory that he conquered with that of the northern tribes under Jeroboam it equaled what Israel had possessed at it’s highest prestige gained under Solomon

And the reason he was so militarily successful was because of the talent God had given him.

He excelled in organizational leadership.

Vv 11-15 tell us that he organized and equipped an army of 307,500 that “made war with mighty power” and was led by 2,600 “mighty men of valor.”

He equipped that army with both offensive and defensive weapons which must have been the envy of other nations.

And he did more than fight.

V 10 says:

Also he built towers in the desert.

He dug many wells, for he had much livestock, both in the lowlands and in the plains; he also had farmers and vinedressers in the mountains and in Carmel, for he loved the soil.”

You might say that Uzziah was a “Renaissance” man.

He was the complete package.

He had a humble beginning, but he was greatly blessed by God.

But an interesting verse interrupts all the good news.

It’s v 16 which says, “But when he was strong his heart was lifted up, to his destruction . .

.”

You see, the first step in the pride cycle was that his humility at the beginning led to blessing.

God greatly blessed him, but that blessing did not lead him to more humility, but to pride.

His heart was lifted up.

Those really are the two options you have, you know: When God blesses you, you do one of two things.

On the one hand, you may recognize that you’ve really done nothing to deserve that blessing and then give Him the glory, or, on the other hand, you begin to take credit for the success and believe that you are somehow smarter, stronger, better, or more diligent than everyone else.

You begin to take credit for your own success.

And the moment we take credit for anything, pride has entered!

That’s the cycle: Humility brings blessing, blessing brings pride, and then

Pride brings sin.

V 16, again, reads: “But when he was strong his heart was lifted up, to his destruction,for he transgressed against the Lord his God by entering the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.”

This was a clear violation of the law.

Only priests were supposed to burn incense, no matter how important the king might have thought he was.

One commentator wrote:

. . .

as is often the case with strong leaders, this virtue gave way to a headstrong, I-can-do-no-wrong attitude.

It was precisely his strength that blinded him to the effrontery of his action.

Uzziah’s pride was expressed in usurping the role of the priest.

Mark it down, my friend, the reason the Bible says that pride goes before destruction is because pride always goes before other sins.

Pride brings sin and then sin brings judgment.

It happens immediately to Uzziah.

When he enters the temple to offer up incense, he is immediately confronted by some brave priests.