And as we read it this passage, we are reminded or I remind you that God's kingdom is divided into two during this period of history That is in the promised land. There was a northern kingdom which consisted of the northern 10 tribes of Israel and that kingdom was called Israel. But to the south there were two tribes down there who were still under David, King David's descendants, and that tribe was called Judah. Sometimes Israel is called Ephraim, so an Ephraim night is someone from the north. And the a has is King of Judah, the southern kingdom. A has is a descendant of David, but he doesn't walk in the ways of his father David. He is an evil king like the kings in northern Israel. So we read this morning about the a has, King a has is unfaithfulness to the Lord. We begin in verse 6 of chapter 28 of 2 Chronicles. This is God's word. One day, Pekka, son of Ramalia, killed 120,000 soldiers in Judah because Judah had forsaken the Lord the God of their fathers. Zikri and Ephraim night warrior killed Maasia, the king's son. Azricum, the officer in charge of the palace, and Al-Khana, second to the king. The Israelites took captive from their kinsmen 200,000 wives, sons, and daughters. They also took a great deal of plunder which they carried back to Samaria. But a prophet of the Lord named Odad was there, and he went out to meet the army when it returned to Samaria. He said to them, because the Lord the God of your fathers was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand. But you have slaughtered them in a rage that reaches to heaven. And now you intend to make men and women of Judah and Jerusalem your slaves. But aren't you also guilty of sins against the Lord your God? Now listen to me. Send back your fellow countrymen, you have taken prisoners for the Lord's fierce anger rests on you. Then some of the leaders in Ephraim, Aziraya, the son of Jehohanan, and Barakaya, the son of Michelle O'Mawth, and Jehiskaya, son of Shalom, and Amasa, son of Hadlai, confronted those who were arriving from the war. You must not bring those prisoners here, they said, or we will be guilty before the Lord. Do you intend to add to our sin and guilt? For our guilt is already great, and his fierce anger rests on Israel. So the soldiers gave up the prisoners and plunder in the presence of the officials in all the assembly. The men designated by name took the prisoners and from the plunder they clothed all who were naked. They provided them with clothes and sandals, food and drink and healing balm. All those who were weak, they put on donkeys. So they took them back to their fellow countrymen at Jericho, the city of Holmes, and returned to Samaria. At that time King Ahaz sent to the king of Assyria for help. The Yitamites had again come and attacked Judah and carried away prisoners. While the Philistines had raided the towns, raided towns in the foothills and in the negev of Judah. They captured and occupied Beth Shamesh, Ajalan, and Getharath, as well as Soko, Timna, and Gimza, with their surrounding villages. The Lord had humbled Judah because of Ahaz, King of Israel, for he had promoted wickedness in Judah and had been most unfaithful to the Lord. Teglocked police or King of Assyria came to him, but he gave him trouble instead of help. Ahaz took some of the things from the temple of the Lord and from the royal palace and from the princes and presented them to the King of Assyria, but that did not help him. In his time of trouble King Ahaz became even more unfaithful to the Lord. He offered sacrifices to the gods of Damascus who had defeated him. For he thought, since the gods of the kings of Aram have helped them, I will sacrifice to them so they will help me, but they were his downfall and the downfall of all Israel. Ahaz gathered together the furnishings from the temple of God and took them away. He shut the doors of the Lord's temple and set up altars at every street corner in Jerusalem. In every town in Judah, he built high places to burn sacrifices to other gods and provoked the Lord the God of his fathers to anger. The other events of his reign and all his ways from beginning to end are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. Ahaz rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of Jerusalem, but he was not placed in the tombs of the kings of Israel. And Hezekiah, his son, succeeded him as King. Herein's our reading. We have a response of thankfulness printed for us and our bulletin there in the middle left of your bulletin. Let us give thanks to the Lord. The word of the Lord. Let us pray. Our God and Father, we see this passage and much is going on in it and we see the unfaithful actions of Ahaz, King of Judah, son of David. Teach us from his actions how we should be, how we should not be. And Jesus, teach us of your gospel. Teach us of what you are like in contrast to Ahaz. Teach us how we might and should be living out your gospel that you would be glorified in our actions, in our words, in our thoughts, so that we would be good representatives of you in this world. Jesus, preach to us by this your word and by your spirit. We ask in your name. I have mentioned to you many times before, if you have been here a while, that one of my preaching professors in seminary who is on the radio, my name is Steve Brown. A frequent mantra of his was, God says, I am God and you are not. And that's a truth that we get in this passage here. The God communicates to us that he is God and we are not. And as we look at our introduction here in this passage, we see that that's a truth with which we will deal here. So your first blank, if you like to fill out blanks in an outline, here we go with our first one. If you want to just sit there and listen, that's fine too. We are talking this morning about humility, now or later. And whenever I think of now and later, I think of for some reason this one particular instance when I was in fifth grade about ready to move to Ohio from New York. And one of our favorite things in the dugout in Little League Baseball was getting now and later from the concession span. You know now and later, those things that you shouldn't have, if you have, they are like one of the worst possible things you can have next to peanut brittle. If you have any dental work done at all, braces or fillings, that kind of thing because those things can stick to your teeth. I love wild cherry. And wild cherry fans out there, that's the best. Grape snacks, but wild cherry is awesome. I remember eating these wild cherry now and later. But this is a passage speaking to us about now or later, something is going to happen to us. And there's a choice that we have. And so whether we have this happened to us now or later, and that thing that we're talking about is humility. And the first point in understanding this humility and why it's proper is this and your introduction, your first blank, is that you are a created, that's your blank, a created being and are not God. You and I are created beings. We are not God. Our substance, who we are, our muscle, our bone, the blood that flows within us, we did not create. We were not around and said, oh, I need a body to live in and made that. We didn't even make the physical substance that we call our bodies. We were the creators of our own souls. God created us. He is our maker. And this makes our attitude toward him need to be in accordance with that. We sang this morning and our call the worship, come let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our God, our maker. God is God. He is our maker. And what that causes out or cries out for us to do is to come, let us worship and bow down. That is, you are created, you are created being, you are not God and second line for you and you are out lines there. This makes us humble. This makes us humble. When we realize I have not created myself, I have not sustained myself. I don't do anything to keep my heart beating another beat or to keep my lungs breathing while I am asleep. Most of the time when I am awake my lungs are breathing not because of my thoughts. This makes us humble when we realize we have not created ourselves. It makes us humble either now, coming to realize this or later. We will talk about this a bunch in just a few minutes. Humility, though we say when we talk about humility which is what this gospel lesson is about, when we talk about humility we can recognize we should recognize that there are two types of humility, two types of humility that are present on the earth. And the first type, your blank, your A, there, humility can be of one's character. That is your blank character. That is when we talk about humility we can talk about it as being part of somebody's character. He is the humble guy. Humility is something that is true of her or of him. That is a part of the person's soul, a part of a person's natural, not natural. It is a part of their base makeup. Something in them causes them to be humble as a stance in which they live, as they interact with people and as they interact with God. But there is a second kind of humility. Now, A has doesn't have this humility of character. And that brings us to the second kind of humility that is the kind of humility that A has experiences. And this kind of humility is something that is here's your blank, forced on us. Something that is forced on us. There's humility that is forced upon us at times. And this is the case for A has, I think it's in verse 19 yet is there, I've noted that. It says that God humbled A has. God humbled Judah because of the sins of A has. So two types of humility. You can either have humility as part of your character or you can get humbled because you're not. You don't have humility as part of your character. So it's going to come to you. Everybody's going to be humbled by the fact that you're created being. But the fact that God is sovereign and in control and you're not. Everybody's going to have humility. It's just a question of what kind of humility they're going to have. Is it going to be a humility? Is your humility going to be a part of your character or is it going to be something that's forced on you? Put in this way, here's another blank for you. You have a choice about which one you want to have. The message of this text, this text is being written for people who were at a crossroads in their own history and they're told this story about A has and they're presented with this choice. Have humility as a part of your character, have that as part of your understanding of who you are before God. Be humble or get humbled. As God's people who originally received Second Chronicles 28 are reading this text, that was the message for them. We can either be humbled before God or get humbled like A has by Him. Here's some good news for us. Your next line here, well no not that yet. We talk about having humility before God or getting humbled and this comes out in this way. Your second line there under this point or this first point is humble yourself before God. Humble yourself before God. So this is the message for us. It was a message given originally when this text was written. Humble yourself before God. Realize that you're a created being, realize that you're a God's disposal. So humble yourself before God. This was the failure of A has. He humbled himself to everybody except God doesn't it? He humbles himself before the King of Assyria. He humbles himself before the gods of Damascus, the gods of Aeron, that's another nation. He humbles himself before foreign gods. Everybody, verse 16, verse 21, verse 23, A has is humbling himself before almost all that he can find except he does not humble himself before the Lord. And so we ask the good Dr. Phil question here, A has, how's that working out for you? And God gives the answer in this text. How does that work out for A has when he doesn't humble himself before the Lord? It means his life is a disaster. His life is an explosion. His life is like that. There's commercials that are going on right now. Jessica Brown emailed me this. It's on YouTube where this kid finds his mom works at the bank. He gets entranced by the vacuum tube thing and he stuffs all these things, the submarine sandwich in there and sends it out to those people and explodes into their car and around their car and that kind of thing. And that's the kind of explosion that he has his life really is. His life is an explosion of disaster to his left and to his right. That is put in this way in your outline, failing to humble yourself before God will bring you humiliation. Just that's how it's going to work out for you and that's God's message for us. God says, follow me, humble yourself before me, save yourself the trouble. I want to do good for you. I want to bless you. But if you walk in ways that are not the ways of me, your life will have this explosion of humiliation all around you. Ahad asks for help here from Tiglath Blaser III. He's the king of Assyria who exiles the northern tribes in just a few years after this occurs. This is the equivalent of someone in the Pentagon asking Osama bin Laden to help them out with their security leaks. They're at the Pentagon. Hey Osama, can you come here? Where are we here? Here and here. Can you help us fix these things? Ahad literally asks the chief enemy of God's people, the one who will exile all his northern brothers in the ten tribes north of him in just a few years. He's going to demolish the northern ten tribes and scatter them all over the nations. And this is who Ahad bows himself down before. This is who Ahad gives gifts to. This is who Ahad comes to an innovation and says, I lay my life before you. Ahad says, lack of humility toward God brings him to do things that are super duper stupid in other words. And that's true for our lives. If we're bowing ourselves down before other gods, other things, if we're seeking security and help toward other things that are not God, this is going to cause us to do things that are very, very stupid things to be doing. So this is true for us too. And that's your blank. They're lack of humility before God often leads to actions that are stupid. That's your word there. And so we repeat ultimately as we saw in Philippians chapter two earlier, humility before God is not a question of if that's your blank. But when in Philippians chapter two shows us that there's this Savior God named Jesus and all who bow before them before him are saved by him, but all who don't, they too will bow before him. Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord at judgment, but at that time it's too late. Everybody will humble themselves before Jesus. The only question is when they will do it. When will you do it? Will it be in this life bowing your knee before Jesus in faith receiving Him, receiving His gospel and being blessed for that humility? Or will your humility occur at final judgment when it's too late? When it's before your eyes that Jesus is Lord of Lord, king of kings, God, creator of the universe. I'm reminded of the frame, the old frame commercial on more famous sticking slogans. What did Fram use to say to the oil filter people? That's right, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. By the frame oil filter, put that on each time when you change your oil. Pay me now $3.24 at Walmart or you can pay me later with a dead car, an engine that will not work and cannot be resuscitated. And with Jesus, it's humbled yourself before Him now or humbled yourself before Him or be humbled by Him at final judgment. Every knee will bow to Jesus, Philippians 2 tells us either in this life through, and here's what we've been talking about, A, through faith in Jesus, through becoming a Christian, or B, at judgment upon one's death. Every person will bow to Jesus, it's only a question of when. So humble yourself now or get humbled that judgment the Bible tells us. A has unfortunately chooses the latter. The message for us is to do that now. Now the interesting thing here with the gospel, Jesus does both, doesn't he? The gospel message is that Jesus was humbled for you. That's a good news, that's a blank for you there. The gospel says that Jesus was humbled for you. Jesus went to a cross for you, but we recognize that Jesus' humiliation at the cross was our, that's your next blank, that was our humiliation. That's what we deserved, not what he deserved, we deserved a humiliation of type 2. Humiliation being brought upon us and against us for our sins. But Jesus and doing humility type A, that is humbling himself before the Father, saying, Father, not my will, but your will be done. Father, if you want me to go to the cross, I will go. Jesus was humbled before his father, and he did whatever his father told him to do. And so Jesus has this inward humility of character, but he also gets humiliation brought upon him. That's the gospel message. The gospel is that Jesus was humbled for you, therefore bow before him in humility, and he will take care of you. He will take that humiliation against you away by what he's already done on the cross, or to use the language of this passage. He will help you. We'll talk more about this idea of where our help comes from next week, that God Himself is our source of help, and certainly He's our source of help in the gospel message. He's our source of help for our eternal life, and for the forgiveness of our sins. But one question remains at this point, or comes to us at this point, and it's the necessity of humbling ourselves before Jesus is it only done by us under threat of harm. That is, we've kind of been talking about it in a negative way so far. Humble yourself, or you're going to get it at final judgment. Is that all the motivation there is? And if that's all there was, that'd be fine too. We'd be wise to humble ourselves before Jesus to avoid final judgment. And certainly there is harm that comes to wonders that humble Himself before Jesus, such a person receives permanent condemnation. But the answer to the question is to do we only humble ourselves before Jesus in view of the threat of judgment? The answer is no. No, it's not merely humility is not merely to avoid the negative, or put this way in your outlines. It is smart to be humble, not hip to be square, but smart to be humble, and smart to be humble because we read from the gospel. We see in Jesus accomplishing the gospel that the result of self-imposed humility, the result of this humility of character, the result of coming before Jesus in humility, bowing before Him, is two blanks for you. The result of humbling ourselves before Jesus is exaltation into blessing. This was the case for Solomon, wasn't it? Remember when he had that vision and his dream, he had this vision and the Lord comes to him and says, Solomon, I will give you whatever you want. And later God acknowledges that He's delighted at Solomon's request because He says to Solomon, you could have asked for riches and long life, essentially exaltation, you could have asked for that. But Solomon speaks in humility, and He says, Lord, who am I to lead this great people of yours? Give me wisdom to shepherd your sheep. Solomon humbles himself over the peak of God's blessing on God's people and Old Testament Israel. Solomon, rather than being prideful, he humbles himself before the Lord and says, who am I to lead this great people of yours? And so what does God give Solomon for Solomon bowing before Him in humility? He says, because you have asked for this, because you have asked for wisdom, because you have bowed yourself in humility before you, I give you this wisdom that you've asked for, but I give you all these other things as well. I give you great power, I give you great glory, I give you great honor and riches. These will be done for you. I will exalt you before the nation, Solomon. But what gives Solomon the ticket to that exaltation? It's the humility that He has. It's like the old esophs fable about what we're talking about this that are Sunday night meaning less. Last week that esophs fable about when you, there's the the axon, the lumberjack, and he loses his axe in the water. And someone comes to him and says, oh, is it the gold axe? This gold headed axe and he says, no, that wasn't my axe. The silver one, no, that's not my axis. The bronze headed axe is that your axe and he says, no, and he said, it's that ugly one over there. And the response to him is, well, because you've been truthful, you get all the axis. This kind of thing is done for Solomon, but not just Solomon. It's done for just so it's done. We'll read about Hezekiah in the next chapter after this. Those who humble themselves before the Lord are exalted and enter into the state of blessing. And that's the message for us here. Humble yourselves before the Lord. And he gives us exaltation. Who is it true of mostly? This is true. This principle, this gospel principle is true of Jesus more than any. Who is humbled the most? Jesus, the one who deserves no humility receives the most humiliating death. Both in its kind, in its injustice, and in its fame. Jesus is known for dying. Humiliatingly, how about that for a word? That's not a word. In the most humble of ways, Jesus is known for being put to death. But Philippians too tells us that Jesus humbled himself even to obedience, even unto death. But because of this, he has given the name that is above every name. And every knee shall bow. And every tongue confess that he is king of kings and Lord of lords. This is the gospel pattern. Humble yourselves before Almighty God. And he will exalt you in the proper time. Peter says that for some first Peter as well. So it's smart to be humble because if we are humble, God exalts us. God blesses us. This is true in life too. Not just at final judgment. You know, we live a humble lives here being Christians. And when we let it be known among those who are around us that we are Christians, that humiliates us. It does as individuals were humiliated. We have said, I need help. We have said in receiving Jesus, I am worthy of condemnation. Here's what I believe about myself. I am so bad that I deserve condemnation at judgment. And so I needed Jesus. That's what we say when we are Christian. And so we're humbled by living as Christians, but the encouragement of Philippians too is that God exalts us at the proper time. At judgment, we will be exalted and enter into this state of blessing in heaven and in new heavens in the New Earth that is far above anything that we can imagine. But in this life, this is true as well. And that's your next blank here. This is true in life. Some of you here are NC State fans. And so we kind of hear about this every March and April, about 1983. 1983, Sidney Low and Derek Wittenberg and coached by Jimmy Velvano. One, the NCAA championship. And why we still talk about that 28 years or 25 years later is because of whom they were against in that game. Anyone remember the nickname of those guys from Houston by slam a jamma. That's right. A Clyde Drexler future NBA All-Star, a keen, a Lodge on future NBA All-Star and some other guys who were just so good, they were all pro level in their playing. University of Houston and NC State was just glad to be in the tournament that year. And they made it to the championship game. And if you remember, some of you may remember Jim Velvano's press conference before that game what he said about the game. And we were going to talk before that game was how fast the University of Houston was, how big, how fast, how they were going to run NC State into the ground and it was going to be a blowout of a game. Would it be 20 points or a 30 point victory? And so everybody was saying, boy, NC State is going to have to slow it down. You know, play four corners offense or something they wouldn't do that because that's a care line thing. They were going to have to play a slow, slow offense so that they could even just keep the score from being a blowout. Nobody was questioning who was going to win the game. So Velvano gets up in front of the press and he says, oh, those guys from Houston are good. We're just going to try to slow it down and maybe we can keep the score close and have a chance at this at the end. So Velvano sends his guys out and that first time they get the ball they fast break down the court for two points and they run it on Houston. That was so strategy, but Velvano takes upon himself humility and he talks about how great the other team is and how they're just lucky to be on the court with them. And he meant that partly, but it was also him fooling everybody on that and it worked, but exaltation came to him. He's known today not because he got cancer and died, not because he coached NC State for a certain number of years. He's known today for that one victory, which defines what we hope the NCAA tournament will be every year. Humility is followed by exaltation. This is true in life. If you are a person or you hopefully you just know people that are like this, who's always, this is why Steve Carell is so funny as Michael Scott. Michael Scott on the office is always trying to prove to everybody why he is the best boss, the catch that doesn't want to be that doesn't want to get away. Why he would be the best boss, the best husband, the best father, the best salesman, the best worker, the best dresser. He's always trying to prove that and that's why nobody can stand him as Stanley said this week on Thursday when Michael Scott made everybody in the office write down the name of somebody in their phone number who he could call to ask out within the hour or you're fired. He says to them, Stanley says, I don't hate anybody I know that bad to give their name to Michael Scott. Why is he so unbearable? You know, at some point during that show I always say he is so awful. Michael is so awful. Why is he so unbearable because he's always exalting himself. Some of you know people like that. Maybe it's a relative in your family. Maybe it's a coworker. Maybe it comes out in the form of they're the person that always wants to one up everybody. They're the person who can never compliment anybody. They're the person who when someone else is complimented, tears that person down and proves how they would have done it better where they in those circumstances. And the message of the gospel, the pattern of the gospel is that that's not how life works. If you compliment people, when they do a good job, even when the job they did is worse than what you could do. In fact, when you compliment people and encourage people when they do things well or when they have put forth good effort, that comes back on you and helps you out. When you walk in humility about yourself like Jesus did, it comes back to you. And guess what? You do that. You be humble before those who are around you. Don't worry about exalting yourself. Worry about exalting those who are around you. Worry about encouraging other people around you. Guess what? When your name comes up, people are going to tutor horn. You know why? I hope Rob French has gone so we may not have a more University of Florida fans around here. Why does nobody want to talk about the University of Florida basketball team? They won two championships in a row last year in the year before. The NCAA tournament two years in a row. It's because when they won that second year, last year, well, they beat Ohio State, so that's why I'm not crazy about them. But the first thing that came out of their coaches' mouths and out of all those guys was where the greatest college basketball team ever assembled. To win two in a row in the modern era is the greatest feat that ever been done. And everybody says, yuck. I don't care if it's true. I'm not going to repeat that to anybody. If you exalt yourself, nobody's going to tutor horn. But if you walk in humility, your horn just may be tutored, so to speak. It's the case for Jesus, isn't it? He walks in humility. He does a humiliating death. And we tut his horn today. And that's his marching orders for us as his people. Be humble like I was humble. Jesus said, I'm gentle and humble and heart. Come to me, y'all, who are weary and heavy laden. Be humble people. Be humble people around your family. Be humble people around your relatives. Be humble people in your neighborhood. Be humble people at work. Be about exalting others. Not worrying about yourself. And that will be reflective of the character of Jesus. That'll be a gospel presentation for those who are around you. And guess what? In life, people just may exalt you. If you see a guy who's humble and find out he has all this skill or a woman who does something really, really well, who never brings attention to yourself, you're going to brag about that person. Happens all the time in conversations that we have. You know who's really good will say it's this person. Have you ever noticed that? But we see that in the gospel. It's true in this life. It is smart to be humble. It's Christ like. So we do it. But it's also smart. And second thing we've mentioned this already. It's true in the end that it's smart to be humble. That's your last blank. It's true in the end. If you humble yourself before Jesus in faith, in the end, Jesus has promised he will exalt you humility now or later. Let's pray. Oh God, you are wonderful, wonderful in your truth, wonderful in your ways. What you say is really true. And as we think about it, we think of all these instances, instances in which this has played out in our lives. Jesus, you said in Matthew 2312, he who humbles himself will be exalted, but he who exalts himself will be humbled. And this was true of you, Jesus. You humbled yourself. And you have been given the name that is above every name to which every person will bow their knee. And every time we'll confess that you are our Lord, cause that character, humility to be deep in us, that we would not experience your discipline because you humble us to remind us that you are creator and maker and sustainer. Because it's a walking humility before you knowing that we are dependent upon you and all things. Cause us to be humbled before you that we would show Jesus, that we would show who you are to all who are around us. And we thank you, Jesus, for walking in humility to die on a cross because this will be our exaltation. We thank you. Amen.