This is the Chancellor's Program. At his homegoing in November 1997, Dr. Bob Jones, Jr. left a legacy of lifelong ministry to students as Chancellor and former President of Bob Jones University. He also left a wealth of recorded sermons which we now present on the Chancellor's Program. Today we hear a message originally delivered in the chapel service May 9, 1987. The message titled, The Sin of Pride, is based on scripture found in 2 Chronicles 26, verses 4-23. I got a clipping today, thought I'd like to share it with you. Sent to me by one of our graduates down in Dothan, Alabama. That's the area where my dad grew up. And this is a column called Rambling Reflections. And the columnist wrote this. With the airwaves being filled with the scandals that are wracking the ministry these days, I think it's a good time for us to remember the contributions of an evangelist educator who was a native son of Southeast Alabama. Dr. Bob Jones, who died in 1968 after 70 years in the ministry, was raised in the Brannon Stand area near Dothan. He preached on tree stumps and underbrush arbors as a young man, and later founded Bob Jones University. We like to think that the money given to Bob Jones in his beginning ministry went to build a university that bears his name. In fact, on the 25th anniversary of BJU, Dr. Jones urged the people to never forget how the school got its start, from the nickels and dimes and quarters untied from the corners of handkerchiefs by the calloused hands of hardworking country people. I wonder what he would say about how money is used that is sent in to TV evangelists today. From his humble beginnings in rural Dothan, Bob Jones went on to preach in practically every large city on the continent as well as in foreign lands. He was the man of the hour. When the bold, dynamic preacher arrived in the city to hold a campaign, crowds would jam the train station and line the streets to get a glimpse of him. Church bells would toll in greeting. Thousands would package auditoriums and tabernacles to hear him. However, in looking back over the years, he once said that his sweetest and happiest memories were those that came to him from brush arbors, unsealed schoolhouses, and poorly built country churches. When he held a revival meeting in Dothan in 1908, city officials closed the dispensary where liquor was sold. In 1912, when he held a meeting on the square in Headland—that's a town in Alabama, by the way— Folks traveled as far as 20 miles in wagons and buggies to get there. Merchants said bills were easier to collect after Bob Jones had held a revival in their town. A 5,000-seat tabernacle with 16 stoves burning more than a ton of coal today was built in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1917. Jones told business owners in a capacity crowd You pay starvation wages and you grind the life out of your workers while you get rich and choke the spiritual life out of them. You chase the silver dollar to hell and jump in after it. He pounded the pulpit so hard he broke it. There were said to be 3,000 new converts in the town of 22,000 when the six weeks campaign ended. Bob Jones hated sin with all his intense nature. He was described as a gatling gun with fast and furious fire. In New York, he told people they had constructed a broad-sloping highway into hell built of a mosaic of drinks and dancing. My, drinks and dancing today are considered a minor thing. Preachers hardly refer to them. I've never heard an evangelist in my lifetime, a man who worked in union campaigns, preach against dancing. And if they talk about drinking, they kind of apologize when they do it. Newspaper headlines would read, Bob Jones scorches sin and sinners. Evangelist cuts loose on dancing and card playing. 4,000 accept his program at close of scorching sermon. He preached on the sins of men at a four-man only meeting in Montgomery. And when an atheist went running down the aisle to be saved, the other 3,000 men were so moved they surged forward en masse. Known as one of the greatest fighters for prohibition in the country, Jones preached the funeral for a Dale County man who'd been executed in the electric chair at Kilby Prison. The man, convicted for murdering his wife, had claimed he didn't remember the killing because he was drunk. And by the way, I remember that. My dad was with that man when he went to the electric chair. My dad said he'd never do that again, but he felt he had to for this man. He'd sent for him while he was in prison. My dad led him to Christ. He had bought the bootleg liquor got him drunk, and he killed his wife, he bought that liquor from the wife's father, his own father-in-law. It was quite a case. My dad said they should have sent the father-in-law to jail, and maybe had some mercy on this fellow who got drunk. At the funeral, Jones boldly denounced the rum-running and bootleg element in the most scathing terms. He said he knew who sold the man the liquor that caused him to kill his wife, and that the man's blood was on their hands. He challenged them to come forward and view the handiwork in the casket, and he called on law enforcement officers to take a look at what bootleg whiskey had done. Reports indicated 5,000 people viewed the flag-draped casket of that war veteran. I think I was about 10 or 12 years old at the time. The funeral was held outdoors on a very, very hot day in the middle of the summer. There was very little shade. The casket was there on the I think it was the athletic field of a county school building. And I remember that occasion very well indeed. I hadn't thought about it for years until I read this here, but I remember how the people all walked by and looked at the man. Many people were saved at that funeral. Bob Jones was a born conservative, a man of unshakable fundamental beliefs, and a fighter by nature. He was sure that he was right, his son had said, because he drew his convictions from the well of God's Word and rest of his principles are from the sure foundation of the infallible truth that's forever settled in heaven. Maybe what we need today is another Bob Jones. I wonder what his reaction would be to a million-dollar water slide. Boy, I know what his reaction would be. I'll tell you, I've heard him react a number of times, and I know how he would despise that thing. Have you Bibles? Hope so. Turn to 2 Chronicles. Chapter 26, 2 Chronicles, chapter 26. Let's look at Uzziah a little bit. King Uzziah, he was 16 years old when he came to the throne. He had a good father, one of the remarkable kings. This young man set out to seek the Lord. Look at verse 4. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah did. If you have Christian parents, you thank the Lord for it. It's a wonderful thing to have the example of godly parents ahead of you who straighten you out. Somebody once asked me what I knew about raising children. That was in the early days before I had any. And I said, well, I knew a lot about raising children. My dad used to say he was raised clear up off the ground a few times and bent over a chair. You know something about raising children if you're brought up in that kind of a household. Here he was, king. All the responsibilities of a king. Sixteen-year-old boy. Terrible to put a sixteen-year-old boy into that situation, but according to Jewish custom and Jewish acceptance, he was an adult. A Jewish child, a male child, usually has his initiation service into adulthood at the age of fourteen, sometimes younger. As soon as a young boy reached puberty, he was considered an adult by Jewish standards. Now look down at the fifth verse. And he sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God, and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper. There's a very sure promise, seek ye first the Lord and His righteousness. And all these things will be added unto you. Listen, these promises were not given to the church. They were given to the Jews. But it's nonetheless very true, because it's built upon a very law of God in human nature, that the man who seeks the will of God will have all the things he needs. He'll prosper. What does a wise man say? Once I was young, now I'm old. I've never seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread. You want to be prosperous? All right, you seek the Lord. And if you seek the Lord, God will give to you all the things you need. The Lord tells us that if we want to do His will, He'll give us the desires of our hearts. Your desires will be brought into conformity with what God wants to give you if you're seeking the will of God. You want to do what God wants you to do, God will give you the desires of your heart because they're the right kind of desires. God will either change your heart or God will change your desires, one of the two. All right, here's this young man. And as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper. Now look what he did, how successful he was. In the next verse, he went forth and warred against the Philistines. He broke down the walls of Gath. That's the mark of conquering a city, to break down the walls. Leave the walls broken down so the people can't build up their defense again. The walls of Jabna. The walls of Ashdod. He built cities about Ashdod and among the Philistines. These were garrison cities so he could keep his soldiers there. He had good brains, that young fellow. It wasn't enough to tear down and conquer. He needed to build up and establish protection there to keep the people in subjection. And God helped him against the Philistines and against the Arabians that dwelt in Gerbil and Mehunim. The Ammonites gave gifts to him, that is, they paid him tribute. And his name spread abroad, even to the entering in of Egypt, for he strengthened himself exceedingly." Boy, what a young man he is. He was in a time when he was surrounded by enemies. There were some people still in this country who weren't loyal to him because his forefathers hadn't cleaned them out and destroyed them as God commanded them to do when they came into the land. Little pockets of rebellion all through the country. He cleans it up. He defends it. He builds strong towers. He gets an army together. Moreover, he built towers in Jerusalem. That is, he built towers for the defense of the city. On the corners of the walls he built them. At the turning of the walls, wherever the walls turned, he built a strong tower. See, that's the way to defend the city in ancient times particularly. Say this is the wall of a city that comes around here. You build a tower, a strong tower here that's lifted well up. You can defend this wall from the tower, and you can defend that wall from the tower, because the tower goes out and it's high, and it gives you access to this wall. So if anybody approaches on that side, you can fire on them, you can pour hot lead down on them, you're protecting the walls, and every once in a while there's another tower. That's good defense. He must have had good advice, this young man, for he strengthened Jerusalem with the turning of the walls, and he fortified those towers. But he wasn't satisfied with strengthening Jerusalem. This young fellow did more than that. He went outside and he built towers in the fields. Now, shepherds lived in the fields. These were not the same kind of towers that defended Jerusalem, but they were places where little army garrisons could be placed so that if an enemy came in to rob the farmers or their sheep and their produce, come in to steal the crops, they could be defended. This was more or less of a minor thing. It was like the things they build still sometimes in the fields in the Palestine. You drive down the roads in Israel, and you'll see little towers built, little houses sometimes on stilts. They're there so that when the crop seasons come in, the men can sleep there in those overnight, be there early in the morning to go to work. Maybe the city where they live or the town where they live is some distance from their fields. They can stay there to be ready to defend their crops, watch their sheep, There were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. By the way, that's the proof that Christmas was not the day Christ was born. Christ was not born in the winter. You can tell that by that one passage, because the shepherds didn't abide in the fields except in the spring and in the summertime. Other times of the year, in the winter, in the middle of December, they would have taken the sheep back and put them in the sheepfolds, where they'd be protected from the cold night air. They didn't want to use dropping lambs out in the fields at night. They'd freeze to death on a cold night out there before they could find the little lamb and bring him in. They still follow that procedure in places where we raise sheep. It's true they do it down in New Zealand and sheep-raising countries. They went out in the warm weather in the springtime, the time when the lambs were born. They let them be born in the field out there where you could take care of them. was a sign that Christ was not born in the winter, but in the spring of the year. Now, he built these towers here for the defense of the merchants of the land. He himself owned sheep and cattle. He put them all together. Look at the last sentence of verse 10. For he loved husbandry. He was interested in crops. He was a city boy, the son of the palace, but he liked to see things grow. He liked to Be sure that the crops were taken care of to provide for the people. Now look at the first part of the next verse. For Uzziah had a host of fighting men. They went out to war by vans. That is, the army was organized. It wasn't a rabble. Well trained, each group prepared for its job. I'm not reading all this because our time is growing short. But he had plenty of preparation. But it goes more than that. And look at verse 14. And Uzziah prepared for them throughout all the host shields and spears and helmets and so forth. They were well equipped. Every man had what he needed. And now let's read verse 15 because we're coming to the climax of this thing, just the last part. And his name spread far abroad, for he was marvelously helped till he was strong. Who helped him? God. We're told in the first part of the chapter, that's what would happen. As long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper. All right, he was much helped from God. He had every blessing on his kingdom. But now let's read that tragic sixteenth verse. But when he was strong, after God had done all these things for him, when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction. For he transgressed against the Lord his God, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense. His sin wasn't that he went out and got drunk. His sin wasn't like David's, that he took another man's wife. His sin was a respectable sin. He went into God's house to burn incense, which God had commanded should be burned. But God had said the priest was to burn that incense. But here's a fellow who's so puffed up by his success that he dares to presume, to assume the authority which God had given to the priest. He violated God's law and God's command. God makes that difference. You see, a king has no more right to offer incense than a peasant or a general or a farmer or a merchant or anybody else. No more right to offer incense than a woman has. Women have no place in the service of the temple. These people say that women ought to be ordained. They are blaspheming the principles which God sets up. God has a place for women. But God ordains that men shall serve the Lord in the house of the Lord. That's a principle that goes through into the New Testament also. If you chase it out, you can find it there for yourself. But here's what happens. He thinks, after all, he's so prosperous, he's so famous, he's so widely known, even way down into Egypt, men all around look up to him and say, isn't that a great king? Well, why shouldn't he also offer the incense? You know, it's pride that disguises itself in a sense as humility. He's taking upon himself the official task of bringing the incense in, which is an admission that he's a sinner, that incense has to be offered to God as a prayer, a prayer of repentance for sin. Here he is. He thinks he's all right. Listen, more people are ruined by pride than almost anything I know. This heart man that's now withdrawn from his candidacy for the president because of his infidelities and his adulteries and the scandals it's broken. And the proud man doesn't take any blame for himself. He admits he was foolish. Let me tell you, he was bigger than foolish. Imagine, he challenged the paper to find any scandal about his life. And so they took him up on it. The reporters followed him around. They got the evidence on him that he was having adulterous affairs. And he's bitter now. According to the report in the paper, according to what I heard him say on television news last night, he's bitter because he thinks he's been wronged. He still hasn't admitted that he's a sinner before God. You know, I thank God for the fact that the American people had enough decency left not to go on and support that fellow. He would have been the worst president the United States has ever had as far as the welfare and the economics of this country. He doesn't have one brain about what to do economically. He's as dumb as the Kennedys. He models himself on the Kennedys. Well, Kennedys had enough sense not to come for candidacy since Chapaquiddick. Even old Ted's got more brains than he has. And here, this man who has a reputation of being a woman chaser. People immediately lost their respect for him. You know, people should expect their officials to be better than they are, as long as the people expect something of the folks in charge of them. Well, the governor of New York said, certainly they ought not to elect him. He's not a candidate, by the way. It's declared he himself is not a candidate. Governor Cuomo says, I have children. I think I should be concerned about the kind of people that set them the example in high places. I don't want a man like that, President of the United States, where my children are growing up in the country, taking these things lightly. Pride got him. He's been a proud man from the beginning. His pride was one of the most offensive things about him. Now, God gave this man an opportunity. Listen, every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of light. This is not a Christian man, obviously not a Christian man. But God permitted him to go so far, and his pride came in. He puts down the mighty from their seats and exalts them which are of low degree. There's a would-be evangelist in this country that can't talk about anything but himself and his own interests. He's been a failure time after time after time, but he blames everybody else for it. He says, I've been criticized and people have harmed me because they wouldn't support me. Well, the trouble with that man is, He's nothing but pride. He's like a balloon full of hot air. Stick a pin in him and he goes. I've seen more preachers ruined by pride when God's blessing comes. I'm thinking this morning of a man who was richly used of God, a gifted man, but he became full of pride. He said once, his brother told me, After a good service where the Lord had blessed him, he came in and he said, Boy, they say the days of good preaching are over, but I guess I disproved that tonight. There's still a good preacher around this country. Talking about himself. And he became so puffed up with pride, he fell into sin. What does the Bible say? Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall. Listen to me. You keep your heart humble. You take God's gifts, thank God for them, and recognize they come from God. You begin to become puffed up and say, look what my hand has done, what my arm has gotten me. Look at my skill and my gifts. You get that attitude, what any business you're in, you'll be headed for failure. Because pride is the first sin that leads to a host of other sins. You get above God's law. You become a special person that can get by with things nobody else can get by with in your own thinking. Because my name's in the news, because I can raise a lot of money, because I can do this and that and the other, I have privileges that nobody else has. Listen, there's no respect for persons with God. Every man's under the same law of God. Every Christian that God has blessed has found that with that blessing there comes a responsibility. Don't you get puffed up and proud and say, look what I've done. It happened to him. He went in, he offered incense. And thank God there were a group of priests that had some guts. Wish we had more of that kind of preachers today in the ministry. And they come in and rebuke him. He's the king. He could have had their heads. But they said, this thing you are doing is wrong. God doesn't give you the privilege of offering incense. There's only one king that can offer incense. That's the king of kings. He's also the great high priest. Only the Lord Jesus combines the two offices. We are priests unto God. We are princes unto God. But we still have the separate responsibilities that God puts there, the difference between the priest and the king. Thank God we are priests under God. We don't need any high priest. We don't need any low priest. Most of us are low enough down to be good low priests ourselves. Thank God Christians are priests under God. That is, the priest was the one who made the intercession for the sins of the people. We don't need any intercessor except the Lord Jesus. To put men under other intercessors is to put men into slavery. That's one of the great sins of the Catholic Church. to lift up Mary as an intercessor, and the saints as intercessors, and make men subject to the whims and the doctrines of a church that fails to give Jesus Christ the lonely and the sole place which He is entitled to, as the one intercessor before God and man. There is one and only one, even the man Christ Jesus. And they tried to pull Him away from the altar. You don't lay hands on the King. But they did, because He was in violation. Look at verse 21. Read the verses between when you get home. Not now, but when you get home. And Uzziah the king was a leper unto the day of his death. They saw the leprosy begin to move up in his face. Interesting. It moved up into his face from his heart because of the sin of pride that was like a disease in his heart. The leprosy began down by the heart and it spread up through the face and the hands. turned completely white like dead skin. And he dwelt in a separate house, being a leper, for he was cut off from the house of the Lord. He couldn't even go into the temple anymore, though he was king, because God said the leper can't go into the holy place, for leprosy is the type of sin in the Bible. And they put him in this house out in the back of the temple, and he stayed there. And his son was put over the people to reign and judge him in his stead. And look at verse 23, So Uzziah slept with his fathers, and they buried him with his fathers in the field of the burial which belonged to the kings. For they said, He is a leper. And Jotham his son reigned in his stead. The implication here, as I understand it, is they didn't bury him with his fathers in the tombs of the kings. But they buried him out under a flowerbed out near the tomb of the kings and a part of the land on which the king's tombs were, because they couldn't bury a leper. They couldn't give him the same honorable burial that they gave a king. A king might be weak and wicked, but leprosy is the mark of sin. He stayed there until he died of leprosy. There's no worse leprosy than the leprosy of pride that doesn't take into account that it's God who puts down and God who raises up. Listen, you young preachers, if you get out and God blesses your ministry, don't you get puffed up. Don't you think you can have rights to do things that other men can't do. Don't just think because you're on a TV program that's heard all across the country and can raise money that you're not under the same restrictions morally that other men are subject to. There's nothing that will destroy a man. At the root of all of this business is this matter of pride and sin. You've seen perfect examples of the effect of pride as it goes across the country. I could go on about this. I could discuss other men whom you know who set themselves up very piously. But God looks on them, and God sees them for what they are, and God humbles them to remind them that there are no special privileges except those which God gives to a man when the man seeks God. Let's pray. Let's stand for prayer. Our Father, these young people are in the midst of examinations. We pray that you bless them. Give them the confidence that comes from preparation, the security that comes from knowing that they've done the best they can. They've prepared, prayed, now they go. We know, Lord, Thou canst put a premium on laziness. And if they haven't prepared, then Thou canst not bless them as if they had prepared. But help us to realize, Lord, that all good things come from Thee. Keep our hearts humble and our hides tough, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You've heard a message by Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., who during the latter part of his life served as chancellor of Bob Jones University. This message, The Sin of Pride, was recorded during a daily chapel service, May 9, 1987. You can order a cassette copy from the campus store, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina, 29614. Please enclose a check for $5.13. Listen each week at this time for the Chancellor's Program, sponsored by Bob Jones University.