Unsung Heroes | Manasseh's Humility (July 15th, 2018) - Mike Armstrong

2 Chronicles chapter 33.

2 Chronicles 33 · chapter mention

You may be thinking, Old Testament.

We've been in the New Testament a lot over the last little while, and so we're going to be spending a new series in the Old Testament.

It's called Unsung Heroes.

And today is our first crack at this, and really we're going to be looking at different characters of the Old Testament, some of the maybe more obscure ones in some of our minds, who, you know, we don't get a lot of attention.

You know, we talk a lot about the, you know, the Moses and the Abraham and the David and the New Testament.

It's Paul and Peter and all of that.

But there's a lot of really great things that we can learn from some of the characteristics of some of these men and women in the Old Testament as well.

And so that's really where we're going to be going here over the next uh the next few weeks.

We've got some guest uh speakers that are gonna be coming in as well throughout the summer, as I'll be off for a few weeks uh here and there.

Uh so looking forward to uh kind of changing gears, and then back in the or in the fall, we'll be jumping back into uh into the book of Mark and finishing that off.

Now, uh early in our marriage, Angie and I were really privileged to get to know this couple.

Um their names were Ted and Ivy Rothfuss, and uh they went to church.

We went to church with them uh when we lived in upstate New York for a couple of uh of years there, and it was it was Ted really who left uh a lasting impression on me.

Now, first of all, he was kind of like a man's man, right?

And so I was a little jealous of that.

And uh he was like this kind of like big, you know, hulking guy.

Yeah, I remember he had like huge hands on him, and and he was like well over six feet, and he was like kind of a construction worker, kind of normal guy, like tremendous mustache, like just a really, you know, really uh just but at the same time like a normal guy too, right?

He didn't he didn't have a Bible college or seminary, you know, kind of background in him.

He was just you know, he was a guy in the church.

He served, he wasn't, he wasn't an elder or anything, but but what really what stood out to me the most beyond all of that, uh, really kind of hit me when we were invited over to their house for the first time uh for dinner.

Now they had you know five kids, they had a lot of kids, and uh we were you know sitting down uh to eat a meal together, they invited us around, and so we're gathering at the table, and and Ted was getting ready to pray, and you know, you're kind of just expecting you know the normal prayer before you pray, uh before you eat.

And so, you know, Ted kind of launches into this and he begins kind of by getting into the fact that uh really just kind of confessing uh some sin.

And and in particular, it was uh how he had come home from work that evening and had been, he felt he had been too uh harsh with uh one of his daughters, who's about 10 or 12 at the time, and uh he felt like he had been too critical and snapped and kind of lost his cool.

And so as he's praying this, he's confessing this uh before the Lord and and and and before you know his his family and before us, it's this, you know, this couple that that uh you know that they hardly even knew at this point.

And as he's as he's praying, as he's doing this, he's getting kind of kind of teary, like it's it's legitimate.

He's not trying to impress anybody, he's not trying to put anything on.

This is it was genuine, this this humility that was was coming out of him before we got down to the burgers or whatever it was that we ate.

And and after he said amen, I remember it's kind of being like, wow, right?

That was that was pretty amazing.

And it's kind of spurred this conversation where he's like, yeah, you know, like I just hate my flesh and how I'm I'm so, you know, I can have this great time in the word and you know, you know, listening to worship music or whatever it is, and then like it seems like 10 minutes later I'm kind of snapping on my kids or I'm doing something.

You ever find that?

It just created this conversation throughout the the meal that we had that was uh, I mean, I mean a huge blessing, and obviously really stood out.

I haven't forgotten that.

And it was really, you know, Ted's just willingness to to humble himself, right, before the Lord and then us as well.

And it had such a huge impact on me, and I've thought about it so many times since.

And the more that I got to know him over the years, the more that I saw that in him, right?

There was a consistency there to his humility.

He actually got up once in a in a service at the church, and they had him just kind of read the passage before the pastor got up and preached, and he actually did the same thing.

He like confessed, he's like, Before I even read this, I want to just confess, you know, kind of how I was with my wife uh on the way to church here today.

And I feel like I really need to do that before I would, you know, dare to open God's word and read that.

And I just thought, man, like this guy's humility, humility is just, it's so real and so legit.

Now, now, humility, that's that's a kind of a huge deal, isn't it?

Right?

And it and it's it's really it's a work of it's work, it's a work of the Lord in our hearts in concert with our own actions, right?

As we humble ourselves, that's what the scriptures continually tell us to do.

The scriptures don't say be humble, the scriptures say humble yourself.

As we do that, the Lord, he in turn writes our heart, he puts our heart in the right position, yeah, where we properly, truthfully, from our hearts recognize our position under him.

Now, humility is very often forged through that very, I don't know, painful process of having our pride kind of exposed, right?

God has all these different ways that he does that.

He exposes our pride and he'll go after it, he'll crush that that pride, he strips us away and kind of lays us bare.

And again, that's that's kind of a it's kind of a painful and sometimes miserable uh experience.

And we absolutely see that here in in 2 Chronicles 33 in the life of King Manasseh.

He serves as a really great example for us today as the church, but listen, also a great warning.

It's a warning to us of what of what happens if we fail to humble ourselves as the scriptures uh command us to so many times.

It's about humbling ourselves greatly before the Lord.

And so again, the question really is are we willing to do that?

Are we willing to do that as as men and as as women?

Are we willing to humble ourselves before the Lord as a church and see the Lord do great things?

And so this is where we're going uh here today.

We're gonna get into this passage, but before we do, why don't you join me as we pray?

God, we we recognize that uh when it comes to humility, in many ways we don't really know the half of it.

We don't often even see how how prideful we really are.

We make mistakes constantly and continually, and sometimes we get so comfortable in doing that that we stop even dealing with that properly before you.

And so, Lord, I pray that as your Holy Spirit moves in your church here today, and Lord, I pray that you would um begin to, you know, however you see fit, begin to expose that, Lord.

Some of us need that kind of gentle, you know, loving nudge from you.

Others of us, others of us need a two by four.

We need you to swing that.

And so Lord, we pray that as, again, as you know us and you know exactly what we need, Lord, we pray that you would do that here today uh in your church.

And Lord, I pray that humility, uh like I saw in Ted Rothis, Lord, humility would become uh more and more a part of my character, Lord.

I pray that it would be uh become more and more just a kind of a staple and the hallmark of harvest here, a part of our families, a part of the men as we lead uh here in the church and in our in our homes, God, that we would lead by example here and just being willing to confess uh before our our our wives and our and our kids, even.

And and Lord, I pray that you would honor that.

I pray that you would move and you would work as we see you do that uh in Manasseh's life.

So God help us, we pray.

We submit ourselves before you.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Now, if uh if you're familiar with Manasseh at all, I don't know the last time you read uh up on that guy, um, but you might be thinking, uh, really?

Manasseh, like that this is the guy that we wanna that we want to imitate.

Like, wasn't he kind of like maybe the worst person of all time?

Right?

Certainly you could make that argument.

I think, yeah, but he was.

He was right up there for sure with you know, worst person in the entire Bible, right?

But of course, that was before the Lord broke him.

That was before the Lord humbled him and and and before the uh before Manasseh humbled himself.

And that's what we're gonna see here.

And listen, in this this this message, this these verses that we're about to read here this morning, it becomes a significant enough of an event here that Manasseh is actually mentioned in the book of Matthew in the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

And so it's so amazing and such a great reminder to us, I think, uh as the church, that it's not just about those men and women in the Bible who seem to have this sparkle to them constantly.

Right?

It's not about people who you know just seem to get it all right.

These these guys that have just enormous gifts and abilities, these again, men and women that we see.

It's also about like the super gritty, like awful people as well.

People like Manasseh, we see Rahab, she was a prostitute, she's mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus Christ as well.

And there's some great things that we can learn from these folks.

And I think, you know, if we're being honest, I think sometimes it's these kinds of people that that we most closely identify with.

If we have any kind of sense of where we're at and our pride and our you know where our humility's at, we kind of we know like we're not great.

Right?

We make a lot of mistakes, we we mess up time and time again, and why don't I get this?

And you know, I seem to be so slow to figure this out.

And so, you know, a guy like Manasseh is is encouraging, I think, for us, because if there's hope for a guy like him, there's hope for you, and there's hope for me as well.

All right, so let's get after this here.

Here's the first thing if you've got notes or you're following along with them, it says this I will humble myself greatly before God Almighty, all right?

And it says, Because my arrogance is more appalling than I've realized.

Okay, so let's take a look at this then here in in verse uh one.

Here we're gonna go through the first 20 verses of uh 2 Chronicles chapter 33.

2 Chronicles 33 · chapter mention

And so here's what it says in verse 1.

It says, Manasseh was 12 years old when he began to reign.

Okay, so he's like a junior high punk, basically.

He gets the reins to the kingdom here.

And it says that he reigned for 55 years in Jerusalem.

That actually makes him the longest standing, longest serving uh king uh over God's people.

And it says that he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, okay, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.

Okay, so not a good start.

Here's some of the details.

Okay, for he be he rebuilt the high places, okay?

These were places of idol worship.

Okay, so he rebuilds these high places, it says, that his father Hezekiah had broken down.

His father Hezekiah was a great king.

It says there that he erected altars to the Baals and he made uh Asheroth.

Okay, Asheroth was actually uh a Canaanite, a fertility god, okay, that they used to worship.

There would be temple prostitution, so like super sketchy, okay, what was happening there.

Okay, it said there that he he worshipped all the host of heaven and served them.

Okay, so it's not like he just you know kind of replaced God with one other God.

No, he served all the host of heaven.

So it's like major syncretism that's happening here.

He's like, I'll take some from this religion and some from that religion, this God, that God, we're gonna pool them all together.

We're gonna worship, we're gonna worship all of them.

Okay, and then it says this, verse 4.

And he built altars, where?

In the house of the Lord.

That's not good, okay?

Of which the Lord had said, In Jerusalem, my name or in my presence shall be forever.

Okay, and he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord.

Okay, again, this is, you know, that that just takes truly, you know, an appalling level of arrogance to get to this place.

You know, where he he knows better, right?

He he had a father who worshiped the Lord and and probably taught or at least modeled, you know, how you know what a good king should be like.

And he's like, yeah, no, right?

I'm I'm going after my my own thing here.

Bye-bye, God of the Israelites, and hello every other God uh under the sun.

Okay?

But then this, I mean, you're thinking, wow, it doesn't get worse.

Yes, it does.

Look at verse 5, it says, uh, and he burned his sons as an offering in the valley of the son of Hinnem.

And we know that that child sacrifices to uh the pagan god uh Molech was was common, actually did happen right there in the valley, just surrounding uh old Jerusalem there.

And so he gets involved in child sacrifices.

That's pretty dark, and a way that gets worse.

It says and it used fortune telling and and omens and sorcery and dealt with mediums and with necromancers.

Okay, so those were those who you know used demonic, you know, magic to communicate with the dead.

I mean, this guy is full-blown off the rails, right?

It says there that he did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.

Yeah, I guess so.

And then verse 7 uh and the carved image of the idol that he had made, okay.

It doesn't tell us which idol that is, but actually in 2 Kings chapter 21, it does.

2 Kings 21 · chapter mention

It tells us that it was the carved image of Asherah, so it's that fertility god, okay?

It says that he he set in the house of God, of which God said to David and to Solomon his son, he says, In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever, right?

And I will no more remove the foot of Israel from the land that I appointed for your fathers.

And then here's the condition.

If, right?

If only they will be careful to do all that I have commanded them, all the law, the statutes, and the rules given through Moses.

Okay, so how's how's Manasseh doing with all that?

Right?

Not not great.

Okay, not great.

God's patience here is being tested to say the least.

He's being he's being pushed to the break.

And then verse 9, take a look at that.

It says, Manasseh led Judah and all and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray to do, listen, more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel.

Okay, so to make matters worse, it's not like Manasseh's doing this all, you know, all of these evil deeds in a silo and it's just affecting, you know, him and God.

No, he's actually not just putting himself in a bad spot, he's putting the entire nation of Israel in a bad spot with the Lord uh as well.

Okay, this appalling sense of arrogance, this behavior that he's engaged in, leads God's people uh to follow suit.

Right?

It leads them to commit these egregious acts of blatant, horrible sin to the point where they actually become worse than the people that God drove out of the promised land before he brought Israel in.

Okay, so he's like, you know, you think you're bad uh Canaan, I'm gonna one up you or ten up you or however you want to put that, and they end up looking worse than than any of their than their pagan neighbors.

Okay, this is just this is a bad scene.

Okay, I'm like into like understatements today.

This is all this is awful, right?

This is not good at all.

Now, because you know you and I are, you know, we're we're so far removed, I think, in in 2018 from this type of scene, right?

Like what we're what we're reading here.

You know, it typically, you know, you and I, we don't have like you know carved wooden images, you know, in our living room that we bow down to.

We maybe bow down to the TV, maybe that's another sermon, okay?

But we we don't we don't communicate with the dead, you know, generally speaking, or you know, or or burn our children, right?

Like just kind of going out on a limb with that.

If you're sensing like, yeah, I'm actually really tempted to do that, like let us know, okay?

Like we'll get you accountability, right?

We'll throw you into a small group, you'll be fine, okay, we'll take care of you, right?

But listen, because this scene, you know, just seems so out there and so foreign to us, it's it's actually kind of natural for us to kind of think that we don't we don't have that kind of appalling arrogance anymore as a society or as a people or as as followers of the Lord.

Right?

Our our our arrogance is is less gross.

You know, that's that that can be kind of the the way our heart kind of and the way our mind thinks about all of this.

Now, while it's obviously good that you know we don't have child sacrifices in in Canada, and you're not allowed to do that, and it's and it's illegal, and it's not you know part of normal way of life here and all of that.

Listen, listen, we still do as a as a society and as and as individuals and and even as as Christians, we we still suffer from an immense amount of pride and and arrogance that that is that is so dangerous, but but kind of in a in a different kind of way because of how our arrogance and and our pride tends to fly under the radar a lot more than than Manasseh's did.

Right?

We read about his, we're like, man, that's pretty obviously horrible.

But ours, it's a little bit more hidden oftentimes.

Which listen, it means that we often don't take it as seriously as we should.

And it often goes goes on, you know, more unnoticed by us.

And we don't we don't realize that that it still puts us at odds with God.

And and it and it creates problems for us and other people, and it separates us from the Lord in terms of intimacy and all of those things.

It's kind of like a it's kind of like an iceberg, right?

You and I, as Christians, we might know that we have some pride in our lives.

Hopefully, if you're a Christian, you know that you have some pride, right?

You can't become a Christian without understanding that you have pride and you're confessing that.

But we we have kind of a probably a sense in some ways of, yeah, I've got pride in this area, and I see how that kind of rears its ugly head over here, but but listen, we we, you know, most of us probably only see part of it, right?

We we don't see all of it.

We see the part that's kind of sticking up out of the water like an iceberg.

We see the we see the obvious part.

But it's the massive chunk of the iceberg underwater, right, that we can't see that ends up sinking ships.

Okay, likewise, it's that it's that hidden arrogance and and pride that often does more damage than we realize.

Okay, so as believers, again, it it's it's real easy to think we're humble, right?

And think we've got all of that on can uh under control.

And I've identified a couple of areas where where I can see my pride and and I'm trying to deal with all of that, and I've got it all figured out, but but do we actually?

Right?

Do you ever wonder?

Do you ever like I was thinking about it uh about Ted, the story I shared at the very beginning, and I realized, man, I like I remember in that moment as a 25-year-old young man, I remember thinking, man, this guy gets it at a level that I just don't yet.

You ever have those moments where you realize, man, I'm not as as humble as I need to be, or or or thought I was, and the Lord kind of reveals that uh to you.

Are you as humble as as you thought or as or as you should be?

Or have you maybe just kind of gotten really good at playing that Christian game that we tend to play?

You know the one.

The one where we kind of act all humble, right?

And we we say all the right things, and in many ways we even do a lot of the right things from an outward behavior standpoint, and you know, we've learned to you know cast this version of ourselves that that we feel comfortable people with with people seeing.

And I'm not really like this, but I want them to think that I'm like this.

And so I kind of act humble and I act more you know mature than than I think that than I really am.

But but at the end of the day, you could I think we can chalk some of that, maybe a lot of that, up to just this false humility.

Right?

Because there's there's this pride and there's this arrogance inside that that wants to hide all of that.

And I don't want to just be real about it.

And I don't want to be open, and I and I don't want to be honest.

I'd rather ignore it.

Or maybe we don't even realize that it's there.

We don't sense the extent of it, okay, all the while looking very Christian.

On the outside to those who don't really know us better.

So again, the question is really, will I humble myself?

Will I humble myself before God and will I deal with my arrogance that on a heart level, at the end of the day, it's no less awful than Manasseh's is.

Okay, pride is pride.

Now, maybe for you, maybe again, like I said earlier, maybe you do relate more to Manasseh and that shocking expression of sin that we see there and that he embodies.

You know, maybe your laundry list of all of that, you know, hopefully doesn't mirror his exactly, but but you kind of got your own.

Right?

And you've got your own sins that are just like it, it's it's out there, and maybe you're realizing, say, I haven't even cared about him, I'm not even trying to hide it.

And you know, maybe it's maybe it's rampant sexual sin or it's blatant substance abuse or some kind of uh you know illegal activity, and you know, you're not trying to hide it, or you kind of are, and you're trying to let it kind of go under the radar, and people, you know, yeah, some know, some might not, and maybe you're, you know, all of that.

Listen, it's time to get it's time to get some help with this.

It's time to talk to people about it, it's time to confess it and get it, get yourself right before the Lord.

For sure, we got some people in that camp for sure.

Every church has has people who be more like Manasseh and then other people who have kind of learned to kind of pretend and play the Christian game.

And I think that's a lot of us here.

I think for us, it's recognizing that, yeah, there is some pride there and it's under the surface, and I haven't really noticed it, or I've kind of been ignoring it, and I haven't taken it seriously enough.

But the more that I kind of think about it, and the more I kind of allow the Lord in, the more I realize that, yeah, it does affect me.

It's affecting my relationship with God, and it's affecting my relationship with my family and loved ones and people that I know.

It's affecting my desire in life to serve the Lord.

And I've masked these problems with false humility for far too long, but these cracks, they're starting to show.

The Lord's revealing it to me.

Now you might be like, well, how do I know?

You talked about false humility a couple of times.

How do I know if my humility is real?

How do I know if it's true or if it's false?

I wish you had some things, like, Pastor, give me like eight things or something.

Perfect.

I got eight things for you.

Okay, eight signs of false humility.

Okay, if if if you sense these things or you notice these things in your life, listen, go after them in repentance.

Confess these things, be real, okay?

That's what we're trying to push constantly as a church.

We're not we're not coming here to paint on a smile and act like we've got it all together.

We don't.

I don't.

I'm the pastor of this place.

Be real about where he's struggling, where he's sin.

Get help from all for all of this.

Join our community, jump into a small group, get people to pray for you, pray for others.

Okay, eight signs of false humility.

Here's the first one.

Wearing my humility as a badge of honor.

Okay, allow that to kind of you know wash over you for a second.

Okay, you ever do that?

You you wear your humility as a badge of honor.

This is the person who just like can't wait to tell you how humble he is.

Right, that's a little backwards, I think.

Right?

But it's the person who like serves because of, you know, I'm getting noticed.

You know, and and I'm, you know, I'm sweating up, you know, you know, setting up the church, or you know, I'm talking about how much of a challenge it was this week to, you know, manage my family and also, you know, study the small group questions, and but you know what, but I but I still did it, I made time.

You know, and it's like you you like to hear the sound of your own voice a little bit, maybe too much, and you kind of talk a good humble game, but really you feel pretty awesome about your humility.

That's wearing it like a badge of honor.

Okay, that's false humility.

How about this one, second one?

Acting like a Christian, but not wanting to.

Okay, this is a big one in the church.

Perhaps you've noticed that, yeah, I've been coming to church for years, but I could care less about being here.

I don't care about the people, I don't want to do anything that the pastor keeps asking me to do, right?

I don't want to go to small groups, I don't want to read my Bible, I don't want to worship, I don't want to praise the Lord, I don't want to do anything.

But here I come, here I am, acting like it on the outside.

That's a problem, right?

Because you're you're casting this version of yourself, that's fine.

You're casting this version of yourself that communicates humility, I need to be at church.

But all the while in the inside, you don't want to be here, you don't want to act like a Christian at all.

So your Christian behavior has become divorced from that gospel motivation.

How do you get your heart rewired again to the point where you want to follow Christ?

Well, it's remind yourself of the gospel.

Remind yourself of who Jesus is and what he came to do and how that was for you.

Don't take 10 seconds and rehearse the you know the three-point outline in your mind and then move on and say, hey, it didn't work.

You gotta spend some time in this.

Pray, Lord, help me to be help me to be excited and be fired up about the fact that you died for me.

Help me to realize and remember that I don't need to pretty myself up.

I don't need to improve myself to somehow please you.

You do that through Jesus Christ.

You already approve of me despite my awful record of sin.

Right?

You are my righteousness.

I don't have to manufacture that.

Spend some time thinking about these things and and meditating on these things and praying through these things.

The more you do that, the more you're gonna realize Jesus is amazing.

And once you start to see that Christ is amazing, guess what?

Your desire to live the Christian life is gonna increase.

The Lord is awesome, of course I want to serve him, of course I want to serve the church, of course I want to get into his word and be near him.

You're gonna wanna act like a believer and it's gonna come from the heart, it's gonna be real.

Here's the third one I act different in private than I do in public.

That's a sign of false humility.

You're like, hold on a second, isn't that a sign of integrity?

Yeah, it is, absolutely.

But it's also a sign of of pride.

Right?

I I don't want people to see the real me.

And so I'm gonna I'm gonna behave real well when I'm in public.

But when I'm in private, I'm engaging in who knows what.

Right?

And there's a real there's a real split in your character.

And there's there's pride driving that.

Do you realize that?

We've got to humble ourselves.

Fourth one, my actions don't match my words.

My actions don't match my words.

That's where we we know what to say.

Some of us have been in the church so long, you can be up here preaching this sermon, no problem.

Right?

You know what to say.

You've got the you've got that got the Bible memorized.

You you know how to encourage someone, you know all the Christianese, you know all of that.

Okay, but your actions are the opposite.

If your actions are the opposite of the words, get uh of your words, guess what?

You're not a humble person.

Right?

There's arrogance there.

Number five.

Resistance to accountability and community.

All right, this is a big deal, I think.

Right?

Like I a refusal to really engage in the community that we've got here.

Why is that?

Why do you insist on going it alone in your walk with the Lord?

Why do you refuse accountability on those issues in your life?

Well, it's not because you're too humble, that's for sure.

Right?

It's pride.

I don't want people to see the real me, and I'm fine on my own, I don't need that.

What are you hiding?

How about this one, number six?

Harsh, judgmental, lack of grace and mercy towards others.

Right?

Sometimes people are like really hard on others in the church or others outside of the church.

And they're like, man, if this person would only get it, and if only, you know, if this was, you know, this group was over here, and if this person only believed this, and if this person was better at that.

We're kind of harsh about it.

We're real judgmental.

That's not coming from a place of humility at all.

And it's a self-righteous, you know, pride-soaked place of again, it's it's just not good.

You're not better than anybody.

Here's a number seven inflamed and prolonged sense of self-loathing.

Do you fall into this?

I believe a lot of Christians fall into this.

I used to a lot, and I still fight I fight it sometimes, right?

And I used to think, like, well, in order for the Lord to truly forgive me, in order for me to you know truly be intimate with Christ, I need to beat the tar out of myself about my sin.

Right?

And I confess that, but you know, I didn't have the right angst about it.

And so I gotta create this, and I gotta fashion the spiritual whip and flog myself about it, and I gotta, I gotta hate myself more, and that's humility.

Hating yourself more isn't humility.

Do you know that?

Well, hold on a second.

Isn't hating myself more the the you know the opposite of pride?

No, it is pride.

You know why?

Because you're just focusing on yourself.

Move on already.

Guess what?

Christ forgave you a long time ago, but you continuing to say, no, I gotta go back and re-apologize for that for that sin that I've apologized for countless times.

That's basically you saying Christ's forgiveness isn't good enough.

I've got to earn it through my groveling and through my tears.

Can you tell that's been a problem for me?

I understand that one.

And then here's the last one, the eighth one.

Worldly sorrow instead of godly sorrow.

Another major problem for us.

And you're like, what's that all about?

We've talked about this a little bit here, but worldly sorrow and godly sorrow, here's the thing.

They look the exact same on the outside.

Okay, worldly sorrow is, you know, where you have tears and and you feel awful, and you know, there's apologies, and there's, you know, all of that for the sin that's in your life.

But here's the thing it's the motivation.

That's the difference.

The motivation in in worldly sorrow is that you feel bad about the consequences.

Okay, in godly sorrow, you feel bad, you feel broken about what your sin has done to God.

In worldly sorrow, it's like, oh no, like my you know, it's my loss of reputation.

Now people know that I'm not, you know, you know, spit polished, and I've in this this sheer, that the sheen that I had and that I was communicating, that's gone, and so that's why I feel terrible.

You know, or or or I hurt another person and now it's it's it's put you know problems in in my marriage, and that's what I feel really bad about.

Listen, godly sorrow will feel bad about you know the relationships broken through our sin.

It will feel bad about all of those things as well, but first and foremost, it feels bad about what we have done against God.

We've sinned against Him.

Worldly sorrow is not full of it's not built on the foundations of humility.

Godly sorrow is.

Listen, many, many Christians, we we learn to fight those really obvious sins that we've got in our lives, that the obvious evil that comes out and it's pretty clear.

And I mean, all that's great.

Don't stop fighting that stuff.

That's not what we're saying here today.

Okay, but sometimes we do it to the neglect of that more kind of heart-level pride, that that kind of secretive stuff, that the heart level pride that can be really sneaky and deceptive and and and again often go you know unnoticed.

And as Tim Keller puts it, you know, learn not to just repent of the obvious and the outward sins, but also the more hidden and deceptive sins of pride that tend to fuel even the reasons why we do good things.

Right?

Like you could be serving in in the church and be you know going hard in many different ministries, but it's pride fueling it.

Right?

And on the outside you look great, but on the inside, it's like I want to be noticed.

I'm here for for my glory.

And you've got the smile, but inside you're like, you're not doing half of what I'm doing.

Right?

And and your heart is not in a great spot, but again, at the uh on the outside it looks fine.

Learn to learn to spot the deceptive pride there and deal with that as well.

Here's the second thing.

I will humble myself greatly before God Almighty because it's more painful when I wait for Him to do it for me.

Okay, look at verse 10 here.

It says, The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention.

Okay, so there's a warning, right?

God's like, stop, cease and desist, this is wrong.

Okay, but they just like they blow through that yellow light, right?

And so you can kind of sense what's coming, right?

God's about to step in here and put an end to it.

We see it in verse 11.

Verse 11 says, Therefore the Lord brought upon them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria, who captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon.

Okay, so so Manasseh, because he's he's refused to humble himself here and he he disregards the warning of God to do that very thing.

Okay, the you know, the Lord just decides, you know what, I'm gonna do it for you.

I'm gonna put you through the ringer here.

You you you deserve this, you need this.

And so what does he do?

He reduces his rule and his reign to ash, right?

It's just it's dust, it's over.

The Assyrian army just descends on uh upon them and and they lead him away with with hooks, it says there.

Okay, these were actually like like kind of like fish hooks that they would actually insert through the nose, okay, and then they would they would link the prisoners together with with chains and and lead them off back to their to their own land.

It was degrading, it was it was humiliating, it was absolutely torturous for sure.

Okay, this once mighty king Manasseh, he's now a slave.

All because he refused to heed these warnings of God and humble himself greatly.

Have you ever been humbled by God like that?

Okay, maybe not like the fish hooks in the nose.

Maybe that looked a little bit different.

Okay, but often it's it's kind of the only way we learn, isn't it?

Right?

We need to be we need to be taken to the mat.

And the re and the truth is, we do need to be taken to the mat, and we do need to be, you know, pressed down and we can't move, and God's got us in that chicken wing, and we can't get out of it, and all of that before.

We we've got to get there before we ever get to experience the you know, all that good stuff that God has in store for us.

Okay, we we want to be used, you know, we want to experience the joy and the and the fruit of a of a of this great relationship uh with God, we want a rich and fulfilling walk with Him, but listen, it does not happen apart from humility.

As we see here, if if we don't listen to the Lord here, and we don't humble ourselves, sometimes God He just straight up steps in and does it for us.

And unfortunately, that's a painful process.

Which again, sometimes it's it just seems to be the only way you and I ever learn.

Now some of us here today are, you know, you're hearing me say these things.

Only it's it's not it's not me warning you, not really.

It's the Spirit of God, right?

And he is He is urging you right now to turn from from whatever ways your your pride is manifesting itself in your heart and and provoking the Lord to anger.

Yet, even so, listen, you're just gonna keep doing it.

You won't turn to him.

And it might mean that that someday here, you're gonna have to walk that painful path of God's heavy hand humbling you himself.

Or worse, you won't even get that.

Okay, and instead, you're gonna continue to go down this prideful path that that you're on, and and the Lord in his sovereignty and his wisdom, and and and in ways that we don't even know, and the reasons we don't even know, he'll just allow you to just kind of drift off into doing whatever you want to do, and and you'll end up suffering the the eternal consequences of a of a life lived apart from him.

But understand and hear it today.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Humble yourself now before God Almighty.

See that his ways are better, see that he is better than whatever you think is best, whatever your pride has latched onto in your life.

Okay, better to experience the difficulty of humbling yourself now.

Listen, I'm not I'm not trying to say, I'm not gonna stand here and say humbling yourself now is easy.

Just do it.

What's your problem?

No, humbling yourself is difficult, it always is.

Pride has its roots in us deep.

Okay, but better that difficulty than the pain of him detonating the foundations of your pride-filled life to show you his supremacy and his lordship.

Turn to Christ now.

Humble yourself greatly before God Almighty.

Okay, because when it strikes me that he's God and I'm not, everything changes.

Everything changes.

Verse 12 says Manasseh here, when he was in distress.

Okay, well, you know, who created his distress?

Well, he did, right?

His pride got him into this mass, but at the same time, the Lord in his sovereignty also brought the you know, Assyrian king over to do this to him.

So this God ordained distress in many ways that Manasseh absolutely earned.

Okay, when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God.

And hey, you got a pencil ready or a pen ready, highlighter ready?

Here it is.

And he humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.

He humbled himself greatly.

It says that he prayed to him, and God shut him down hard.

No, right?

It says, and God was moved, right?

God was moved by his entreaty.

Just notice God's amazing grace here to Manasseh.

Again, we're talking the worst guy ever.

Right?

God's God is God's moved, he hears his plea, and and and he's he's moved by this entreaty.

He's heard his plea, and and and listen to this.

This is crazy.

Brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom.

Okay, I don't know about you, but I would love to hear the details of all of that.

Okay, the scriptures don't uh don't don't unpack it all for us.

Like, how did that work?

Was there like a prison break?

And you know, did like this is rare.

Most guys, like, they would just languish in prison and and and die.

Or they would be executed.

God actually brings this guy out of prison, brings him back to Jerusalem, and gives him his throne back.

That is amazing.

It's awesome.

It's because he humbles himself.

And then look at this.

This is huge.

Then it says, Manasseh, what, you got that highlighter ready again?

Knew that the Lord was God.

He knew.

And you better believe this wasn't just a like, I know how to answer a correct question.

No, he he knew it and experienced, right?

He believed it, he felt it.

He had that locked in his soul now.

He knew that the Lord was God.

If I could put it another way, Manasseh knew that the Lord was God and that he was not.

God was in his right place.

Manasseh was in his proper place as well.

I mean, listen, this is what lies at the heart of it here for us too.

Okay, like Manasseh, we've all got a God complex.

Do you know that?

Do we know that?

Do you realize that we all want to be the kings and queens of our own domains?

One of the great things about coming to church is we come and we hear, we hear the Bible taught and we sing these songs, and it's it's reminding us that we need to surrender our our kingdom of one, as Paul Tripp puts it, and and remind ourselves again of the amazing kingdom that God is the head of and calls us to enjoy and be a part of.

Right?

We've got this God complex.

That's what pride is.

It's that part, that orientation of our heart that just vehemently says no to everything that God wants for us.

It's all the all those big ways and all the little ways, too, that we reject God's rule and his reign and his lordship and and instead insert ourselves onto the throne of our lives when that spot belongs to who?

Jesus Christ.

Him alone.

Okay, but when the work of humility takes that deep Deep effect in our hearts, because we've either responded to the warning of God to humble ourselves, or you know, for many of us, when you know we arrogantly match, march past these warning signs and God has to humble us for um for us, kind of like Manasseh there.

Either way, we get to choose which path we want to take there, right?

You want to humble yourself now or wait for the Lord to do it.

Okay, but when we're when we're struck in a in a profound way by the reality that the Lord is God, everything else changes after that.

Everything.

When you strip it right down to the wood, that is the thing that has to happen before we ever get any of that other good stuff that we talk about about the Christian life being about.

God has to set our hearts in its proper place under Him before we ever get to experience those blessings and the richness of those promises in the scriptures.

It's the very thing that we see taking place here in the text in Manasseh's life.

And I mean, just look at how everything begins to change for him once his humility takes root.

Verse 14, look at that.

It says, afterwards, okay, so after all of this, he built an outer wall for the city of David west of Gihon in the in the valley, and for the entrance into the fish gate, and and carried it around Ofel and raised it to a very great height.

And he also put commanders of the army in the fortified cities in Judah.

Now maybe you're like, well, no, who cares?

Like, no big deal.

Like he basically built a fence.

Like, how is that like everything changes here?

We need to understand that like fortified cities in this day and strong armies, and in that presence, it was seen and understood by Israel as God's blessing on them.

Right?

The Lord was doing this in Manasseh's life and in his life and through him and blessing the nation.

Verse 15.

And he took away the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the Lord, and all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside the city.

That's a pretty awesome thing.

That's a pretty huge heart change, I think.

Now notice there, it doesn't say that he destroyed them.

It said instead that he opened up the gate and tossed them outside.

That becomes a problem later for his son Amon when he becomes king later.

But then it says this, verse 16.

He also restored the altar of the Lord and offered it on, and offered on it sacrifices of peace offerings and of thanksgiving.

So there's worship here, right?

And he commanded Judah to serve the Lord, the God of Israel.

How amazing is that?

Again, he doesn't just grow and change in a silo, he begins to affect and bless and lead and guide others to do the exact same thing.

Verse 17.

Nevertheless, the people still sacrifice at the high places, but here it is, but only to the Lord their God.

Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh and his prayer to his God and the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of the Lord and the God of Israel, behold, they're in the chronicles of the kings of Israel.

And his prayer, and how God was moved by his entreaty, and all his sin and his faithlessness, and the sites on which he built high places and set up the ashram and the and the images before he, there it is, humbled himself.

You ever kind of wondered and been kind of rattled that, you know, why am I not growing?

Right?

Why am I not transforming more?

I I hear pastor guys say that quite a bit.

You know, why am I not changing more?

Why don't I see that in a in a radical way that, you know, we read this in in Manasseh's life and we see it in so many other people in the scriptures and people that I know as well.

You ever wondered that?

You ever been kind of frustrated with that?

Well, on one hand, maybe you are actually growing.

Okay, but the reality is that growth is typically a slow thing.

Growth or sanctification, that's kind of the biblical word for it.

It happens over a lifetime, right?

And and sir, there's some radical change that happens, and maybe you've gone through some of that as well, and you grow pretty quickly, but the day-to-day, like how am I growing now and how am I different than I was just yesterday, which is a Saturday?

Like, how that's hard to see.

And again, in community and in relationships with other believers, as we as we grow together, other people can encourage you and help you and say, no, like you are different.

I get to pray with people after the service, and some of you have come up so many times, countless times, and you're like, man, like I'm just not, I'm not changing, I'm not growing.

I'm like, oh yes, you are, right?

I get to see it.

Right?

You used to be like this, and now you're like this.

And it's amazing to see people be like, oh yeah, right, that's kind of cool.

Right?

So maybe you actually are growing, but maybe you're not seeing it because it's it's kind of not happening.

And maybe you're not changing as as much or at all because the reality is you need to be struck again by the fact that God is God and you are not.

Right?

This is not a one-time thing for us.

Right?

We have to continually be reminded that, oh yeah, I'm not king.

I think I am, I act like I am, I behave like I am, I think like I am sometimes, but I'm not.

God is.

And listen, if that's you, that God complex ruling your life, that's that's gotta go.

Right?

That's got that's got to go.

Once Manasseh ditched his, again, great things started to happen.

Right?

So here we go.

Another thing for you, you can jot these things down.

Time to ditch the God complex.

Okay, four ways.

First one, surrender your desire for control.

Surrender your desire for control.

You might be thinking, hey, listen, man, I'm I'm not a you know, type A entrepreneurial, I gotta control everything.

God complex, personality-wired type guy.

Therefore, I don't have this need for control.

Oh yeah?

We all do.

We all have a need for control.

A couple of ways that we know that we've got a need for control.

Three ways, if I can, or three words, three evidences that suggest that you desire control.

Okay, a presence of anger in your life, or fear, or despair.

Do you see these things in your life?

Are you an angry person?

Usually it's when things don't go our way, right?

Like I wanted this to go my way, and because that didn't go my way, I'm furious about this.

And maybe you try to bury it and you try to hide it, but it often comes out with the people that we love and know us best.

That's a sign that you need control.

You want control, right?

And so that's a thing to be surrendered.

Lord, Lord, I I lay this anger before you, Lord.

How dare I think that I am God?

I'm not.

The gospel tells me that I'm not.

But you invite me into this relationship with you where I can become a new creation.

Surrender your desire for control if it's manifesting itself in anger.

Maybe for you it's not anger, but it manifests itself in fear.

So many people carry around such deep-seated fear, and you're like conscious, constantly uptight.

You're stressed all the time.

You always see the negative in life, and people have tried to counsel you, and you're like, no, but what about this?

And what if this disaster happens?

Yeah, and yeah, but I don't know.

Listen, that's that's your desire to control and know all things.

And because you kind of know that you don't have control, but you desire it, you're you're tempted to fear.

It's a lack of trust in the Lord, that he that he is good, that he is got that he's able, that he's strong enough.

And so you you it's fear.

You start to dig underneath the hood of all of that, and underneath the surface, you realize, wow, I've got control.

It's just manifesting itself in fear.

How about despair?

Despair might be yours, but you're so down always.

And and you're a pessimist.

It's a glass half empty.

Despair means you've given up hope that God is in control or that you have any control.

Recognize the truth.

God is.

Surrender that desire before Him.

Do it today.

Recognize that He is God and you are not.

Here's a second one.

Get low.

Now.

Right?

Get low.

Get on your knees.

Well, not literally, like I that's kind of demeaning, don't you think?

Like the floor is kind of hard here in the school.

You know, Pastor, this is a do you know this is a caretaker?

This is a cafeteria, and maybe they didn't sweep it.

I don't know, did they sweep it?

I'm not actually gonna do that.

You know, am I?

Do it.

Get low.

And it's not just an outside thing, it's it's your heart.

Don't wait for this.

I love 1 Peter 5, verse 6.

1 Peter 5:6

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you.

Get low.

Third one, reach out for help.

I kind of beat around this bush a little bit here today already, but but listen, stop thinking that you can do this alone.

Why are you doing that?

Like lone ranger, lone wolf mentality.

Too many Christians like brag about that.

Like, I don't need people.

Yes, you do.

Stop thinking you can do this alone.

God gave us the body of Christ, He gave us the church that we can help each other.

Show that humility.

Reach out, get some help.

You can't do it on your own.

Here's the fourth one.

Thank God for his grace.

Thank God for his grace.

Don't forget this part.

Because I think as you're as you're thanking the Lord and as you're thanking, Lord, thank you for your grace and that that you would be so so kind to point out this major flaw in my life.

And I know that I this is uncomfortable and all of that, but thank you, Lord, for for caring enough about me to go after the problem areas in my life.

Thank you, God, for your goodness.

Thank you for your mercy.

Thank you for your grace.

As you're doing that, do you realize just you're worshiping?

You're worshiping the Lord.

You're you're praising him.

This is, you know, those idols in your life are starting to crumble right there in that moment as you worship the Lord.

He is He is it, He is everything for you.

I love this line by a guy named Matt Papa.

He says, You worship your way into idolatry and you worship your way out of it.

Right?

You want to get out of that idolatry, that pride, that that arrogance, those I all of it.

Worship the Lord.

Like, I don't know how to worship.

Oh, yes, you do.

We all do.

We all worship something.

Is it the Lord or is it something else?

Listen, thank God for his grace when you see it at work in your life.

Listen, Manasseh again.

He like he's typically known as a complete dirt bag, right?

Super scummy guy.

It's pretty, pretty obvious.

Like we see it there.

It's it's you know, we see why.

Okay, but his humility here as he repents and as he he just lays himself before the Lord, as the Lord just completely levels him, right?

That is so, so worthy of our admiration and our imitation.

So again, will we follow suit?

Will we do this?

Will you heed the word of the Lord before it's too late?

Will you, will I, will we humble ourselves greatly?