1 Kings 20. In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, there is a backstory to the Rings of Power and how they came to be. And this story is pieced together in some of Tolkien's other works of literature. And the story is told in a recent series of video episodes called the Rings of Power. One of the main characters in this story is Celebrimbor, and there's a picture on the screen of Celebrimbor, he's there on the right. Celebrimbor is a most famous elf. He is a master of the forge, he casts and forms beautiful objects of metal and jewels. He is an elf who is good, he is noble, and he is revered. Unfortunately, the character there on the left, the enemy Sauron, is evil and crafty and he is able to bring Celebrimbor, along with his beloved city, to great peril and ruin. He's able to tempt Celebrimbor into forming these rings of power which will prove to ruin most of the people who end up wearing them and lead to give great power to Sauron himself. One of Sauron's tactics is to draw Celebrimbor away by his desires and by his ambition and pride in his work. By the time Celebrimbor realizes that he has been deceived, he looks back on what happened and he makes this statement. He makes the statement to Sauron, it is a game that you play, isn't it? Sowing seeds in others' minds and then convincing them that the fruit is their own thought. He realizes that he's been deceived. Sauron also deceives another one of the main characters and her name is Galadriel. She is also a strong character of noble character and she too succumbs to this deception, and she also reflects back on what happened to her, and she says this, and under his hand I was played like a harp to a melody not of my own choosing." Well, she makes this statement to her friend, Elrond, who's there behind her, and he challenges her. She says that she was played to a melody not of my own choosing. He challenges her and he says this, but it was entirely of your choosing. Sauron looked inside you and plucked the very song of your soul note by note. I actually went back to these video series and found those quotes because they were so impacting when I heard them because it's such a fascinating illustration of temptation and desire and deception and human frailty. One of the tactics of Sauron in his temptation is to isolate the people that he goes after. So when these two main characters are isolated and alone, and they're untethered from the king, the king's name is Gil-galad, Sauron is able to deviously draw them and bend them to his will. Why? Well, for many reasons, but one of the reasons is because they are untethered from the true king and they are alone. So this message is not about them, this message is about us and God and how subtle pride can lead us to become untethered from God, and when this happens, instead of being in a place where we are downstream from God's grace, we can find ourselves in a place where God actually opposes us. So first we're going to see this illustrated in the life of one of Israel's kings, King Hezekiah, and then we're going to look at a passage in the New Testament to see how this can happen to us. So 1 Kings chapter 20, This is a story about King Hezekiah. So 1 Kings 20, chapter 12. At that time, Mero-Bak-Baladon, the son of Baladon, king of Babylon, sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah for he heard that Hezekiah had been sick. And Hezekiah welcomed them. And he showed them all his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his armory, and all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them. Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and said to him, what did these men say? And from where did they come to you? Hezekiah said, they have come from a far country, from Babylon. He said, what have they seen in your house? And Hezekiah answered, they have seen all that is in my house. There is nothing in my storehouses that I did not show them. Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, hear the word of the Lord. Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house and that which your fathers have stored up till this day shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, the word of the Lord that you have spoken is good. For he thought, why not, if there will be peace and security in my days? I don't know what your reaction is to what you just heard, but I had two reactions. My first reaction was I was a little surprised by the severity of God's discipline. I'm not questioning, I'm just saying it's a little bit surprising. If you were a king and people from a foreign land came to your realm, I can imagine maybe wanting to show him your stuff. Maybe that would be unwise, certainly, that we could see that that is unwise for security reasons, but could you imagine maybe just being tempted a little bit to show off all your stuff? But God's reaction to that is basically, he comes right to Hezekiah, he says, all the stuff you just showed, it's gonna be carried away, and some of your sons are gonna be carried away, and they're gonna be made eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. And so that discipline, I know there's other reasons for the discipline that are not talked about here, but it seems a little steep, like it surprises us, it shocks us. But then the second surprise here is the response of Hezekiah. You know, if we want to go a little easy on him, like, well, I could be tempted to do that too. When you see his response, you're like, what? God just tells him all this bad news and he says, why not? The word of the Lord is good as long as there will be peace and security in my days. So here his sons are going to be taken away and he makes this statement that's like, really? That's what he thought. He didn't say it out loud but the Bible tells us that's what he thought. Setting aside that thing that's kind of negative about Hezekiah, Hezekiah is actually a Bible hero. I mean, if you put posters in your room in those days, you might have like King David or King Solomon, some of these like big figures. King Hezekiah was one of them. Listen to, well, it's not there yet. I'll share that with a minute. I want to tell you about a few minutes of a few moments in Hezekiah's life where, like, he was a hero. He was a Bible hero and he trusted in the Lord. The big idea of this message is this. Pride will cut us off from the abundant grace we desperately need to resist the enemy and our own flesh. There's two points. The first is Hezekiah's slide from desperation to amnesia, and secondly, diagnosing pride and receiving grace. During the fourth year of Hezekiah's reign in Judah, the northern kingdom, which was known as Israel, was besieged. The capital city, Samaria, was put under siege by the Assyrian nation. A couple years later, Samaria, the capital city, was taken and the Israelites were carried away to Assyria. So in the southern kingdom, where Hezekiah was the king, there was this constant threat, like, when are they coming for us? Assyria was a constant threat. And Hezekiah's posture towards God in these really hard times was always, God, I need grace. He trusted in the Lord. Listen to 2 Kings 18, this assessment of Hezekiah. He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him, for he held fast to the Lord. That's a pretty good assessment. This first trial, there are three trials, the first trial that Hezekiah faced was this Assyrian threat, the threat of foreign invasion. The clock was ticking. Israel was gone. When are they coming for us? Well, they did come. King Sennacherib, eight years later of Assyria, came against Judah, and the commander of the army was called the Rabshakeh. And he comes to Jerusalem with a large army. He surrounds the city. And he taunts them. Instead of going to the king and kind of talking to the king about what was going to happen or making some kind of deal, he just says it in the hearing of all the people. He speaks in their language and he just says, we're going to take you and you're basically going to starve to death. And you're God, he's nothing. He threatens them, he's crude, he's ruthless, and he blasphemes the God of Israel. And Hezekiah has a desperate response. The Bible says he turns to the Lord, he asks Isaiah the prophet to pray, and God delivers. The army leaves, they hear of another threat. God did all this. They hear of another threat and they leave. But the king of Assyria, he sends them a letter and he basically says, I'll be back. and your God is nothing. So Hezekiah takes the letter, so he thought he was out of the woods, but he's not, he takes the letter before the Lord and he prays desperately before the Lord for God to deliver. And what does God do? God delivers. He says, Sennacherib isn't gonna touch you, Judah will prosper, and I planned this long ago. Indeed, that's what happened. Sennacherib ends up going away, 85,000 of the soldiers are killed and Sennacherib the king is assassinated. God delivers Hezekiah. There's a second trial Hezekiah faced. You can read about it in 2 Kings 20, but I'll summarize it. Hezekiah becomes sick. The prophet Isaiah comes to him and says, you're not going to recover. You're going to die. So Hezekiah immediately goes before the Lord. He weeps before the Lord. He says, save me. Don't let me die. Isaiah comes back to him a second time. He says this in 2 Kings 20, I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you. On the third day, you shall go up to the house of the Lord, and I will add 15 years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David's sake. Hezekiah actually goes back to God and he says, can you give me a sign so that I will know these things are going to happen? And God says, sure. He says, I'm going to move the shadow forward or back 10 steps. Which do you prefer? And Hezekiah thinks to himself, I think it'd be harder to make the shadow go backwards. And so he asked God for that, and God indeed does it. So Hezekiah's life to this point, there's this high note of commendation on his life. He had a banner over his life, which could be summarized by saying this, I need grace. He faced insurmountable trials, and he constantly trusted the Lord, went to God with uplifted hands and said, God, deliver me. But then, there's this third trial, and it's the one we read about earlier. It doesn't really look like a trial, maybe we could call it a test, but this is when Hezekiah's amnesia starts to set in. This is when he begins to forget, and his posture changes. The posture of his heart changes from one of, like, I need grace, like with an exclamation point after it, to a posture of, I need grace? with a question mark. Grace got me here? You see, he forgets. In a companion passage or a parallel passage in 2 Chronicles, we read about this from another perspective. 2 Chronicles 32 says, in those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death and he prayed to the Lord and he answered him and gave him a sign. We read about that, we heard about that. But Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem." So this third trial, where Hezekiah failed this trial, was the trial of health and peace. and prosperity, all of those things gave Hezekiah this false sense of security. See, now we're starting to see something deeper in Hezekiah's heart. These Babylonians come to visit him, and instead of having a posture of uplifted hands, like instead of praising God, he's pointing, like, hey, look at this. Look at all this stuff I got. Look at my armory. Look at my silver. Look at my gold. Instead of looking up, He's looking around, right? The Bible says he's not thankful, and the Bible says that that was pride. We wouldn't have spotted that pride, but God points it out. It was a change in his heart's orientation. We can sum this up. The final word on this is in 2 Chronicles 32. At the end of the passage, we get more insight. Here's what was happening behind the scenes. And so in the matter of the envoys of the princes of Babylon who had been sent to him to inquire about the sign, you see they had seen the sign too, the shadow going backwards, to inquire about the sign that had been done in the land, God left him to himself in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart. The test was that when God left Hezekiah to his own way, his heart of pride was revealed. So all of that, that story about Hezekiah sets the table for us to look at ourselves and to diagnose pride. And I know Rob has, I think you've preached two messages on pride in the last four months or so, but pride is so insidious. And so I wanna talk about some things from the book of James. How do we diagnose pride? Pride will cut us off from abundant grace. that we desperately need to resist the enemy in our own flesh. So the second point, diagnosing pride and receiving grace. We've already read from 1 Peter earlier in the service which talked about this some, but James 4 is another passage that I wanna read. I'm not gonna unpack all of it, but I wanna make some observations. James 4, verse five says this. Do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us. That's God. God yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us. But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. And then verse 10, humble yourselves before the Lord and He will exalt you. Just want to make three quick observations. Number one, this passage is about God opposing the proud and giving grace to the humble. That's the context of this passage. This is about how God responds to us. It's about how our posture of pride or humility causes God to react towards us and to respond to us. Now, we don't have a problem with this, I don't think. I mean, who likes a proud person? When we see someone who's proud, we kind of think, well, it's fair that God should oppose them. it's right that God should oppose them, but the problem is our threshold for pride is on a different scale than God's. Like our threshold for pride is like, oh, that person's boastful and bragging all the time, and he thinks so much of himself, but God's scale of pride for Hezekiah was simply, like he didn't return thanks. So that's where we have to really look carefully and diagnose, like is there pride? Second observation, This is not moralism. So what I'm saying is here is this passage is not saying, well, if you are really, really humble, God's gonna reward you with grace. But if you are really proud, God's done with you. I struggled in preparing the sermon to not preach a moralistic sermon. That like, we just have to check these boxes over here, and then God's gonna do this. But if we don't check those boxes, then God's gonna do this. I mean, there's some of that there, but I don't think it's that simple. that if you are really good, God's gonna reward you. Well, grace is never earned. Grace is unmerited favor. So we don't earn grace. Or on the flip side, well, if I miss my Bible reading, God's just gonna let me go. No, these are loving warnings to us. Look at what the Bible says in verse five. God yearns jealously. I can't pronounce that word this morning. God yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us. What that means is God loves you. God wants you near to him. He wants it more than you do. So God's not just out to get us and just to oppose us and to find pride and say, oh, I'm done with him. No, even in God's opposition to our pride, there's a measure of grace. God could not let Hezekiah just run after other things. God had to rescue him. So even in God's opposition to our pride, the end game is that God would deliver us from relying on things that can never save us, that can never satisfy us. So the second observation that this is not moralism. And thirdly, and this is the important one, the most important one I believe, our pride gives the devil a foothold. Both James and Peter, we read Peter earlier, we just read James, quote this principle that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Both James and Peter say that. Both James and Peter say something else. James 4, submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. 1 Peter 5, your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Isn't that interesting? That both passages that talk about pride and humility, like the devil's there lurking, So the implication of that is that when we don't, when we're not humble, when we allow pride, the enemy's just there waiting. It's not like the devil is waiting to tempt us with some egregious sin. No, he's just waiting for us to be untethered from God so that he can have his way. So there's like a dual vulnerability, okay? One is God opposes pride. Two is the devil's there waiting. So how do we know if there's pride? How is it evidenced? What can we learn from James and Peter so that we can diagnose? Because we don't want to be where Hezekiah was in that moment. So this next section here, I've called it some surprising marks of pride. Surprising because these aren't in the top 50 things you would say. Name something that a proud person does. These probably aren't the things that we would just come up with, but the Bible does. So the first surprising mark of pride that we see, and I'm pulling this from the first Peter passage, is being passive, and giving the enemy a foothold. The reason I say it that way, I'm saying it kind of in the negative, because 1 Peter 5.8 says this, be sober-minded, be watchful. A humble person is sober-minded and they're watchful. A proud person, they're just passive. If you are passive about your walk with God, you are proud. That's what the Bible is telling us, and God resists that. Well, I'm not even doing anything wrong, I'm just floating along. According to the Bible, that's pride. And the devil is roaming around like a roaring lion, seeking to devour you. You see, a sober-minded response, a sober-minded question would be, eyes up, How can the enemy exploit my circumstances to draw me away from God? A passive response. I don't have to fight sin. I don't have to resist temptation. I don't have to be that serious about spiritual things. I don't have to be watchful. I can just go along, never swimming upstream, never evaluating the pull of the world and the flesh on my heart. The second surprising mark of pride, these are similar, being independent and keeping God at a distance. James 4.8 says, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. That's the humble response, someone who comes to God constantly, but the proud response is to just kind of be on your own, right? Be independent, to be untethered where God remains at a distance. This can be evidenced when we're comfortable in our prosperity or in our false securities, when things are smooth. This is pride. We look around like Hezekiah and we're like, I'm good. Problem with that is God resists that response, even though it doesn't seem like a big deal to us. I can get away with not reading my Bible. Prayer, I can take it or leave it. I'll start tomorrow. I'll fit church and my spiritual community in if I can. That's an evidence of not drawing near to God. Here's another one. Tackling life's challenges through mere human means. You know, what brings you that sigh of relief? Like if this would bring me a sigh of relief. the fully funded bank account, right? Or the health that I'm looking for. You know, we're just like, ah. But what about the promises of God? Do they bring us the same sigh of relief? So what Hezekiah did in his weak moment was the thing that brought him the sigh of relief was all that's in the treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, the armory, all that was found in the storehouses. Money, power, swords, shield, Maybe it's wise living. All those things that we want to tackle, and those things are important, but when we tackle life's challenges merely through those gifts of God, right, instead of looking to the God himself, that is pride. The third evidence of pride I want to point out here is holding on to anxiety. And that's probably the most surprising one, but it's actually in there. In 1 Peter 5, it says this, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God so at the proper time he may exalt you. The sentence isn't finished. Casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. What does that have to do with pride and humility? First of all, I want to say the Bible doesn't tell us to ignore anxieties. If you struggle with anxiety, like God's not telling you you're a bad person. The Psalms are filled with people who struggle with anxieties, right? The Bible doesn't tell you like just Don't be anxious. I mean, it does say that, but it tells us more. It tells us what to do with the anxieties. So if you're like a sensitive type, you struggle with anxiety, like stop worrying about being worried. Stop worrying about being worried and spend more time thinking about what to do with the worries. And the Psalms illustrate that. In 1 Peter, he just tells us straight up, cast your anxieties upon him. We just have to do it, right? Oh, but I'm still worried. Cast your anxieties upon him. Oh, I still have this trial. Cast your anxieties upon him. And if you continue to struggle with that, if you're like, well, that's too hard, look at the second part of what it says, because this is, it's not just like just casting your anxieties, there's a second part to, there's something you have to believe, right? And what you have to believe and what I have to believe is the second part, which is because he cares for you. So if you struggle with just like anxiety all the time and you just like can't get a grip on it, maybe it's because you don't believe that second part. Maybe this would make more sense to you. Be filled with anxiety because God doesn't care. Well, that makes sense, right? Be filled with anxiety because God doesn't care. Well, that makes sense. Well, the first one makes sense too. Cast your anxieties on him because he cares. Or here's another one, another version of improper dealing with anxieties. Manage your worries with wisdom, because God isn't mighty enough to keep track of everything. Is that what we actually believe? Because the way we handle our anxieties might fit that, right? A couple months ago, I was worrying about something, and I was trying to cast those worries upon God, but this thought came into my head. There's like 8 billion people on the planet, you know. Can God really keep track of this and this and this? Like, can he really keep track of that? I mean, that's a lot to keep track of. Like, I'm just one person among billions, and these are just little things. And the Holy Spirit, I believe, said to me, He calls the stars by name. So I thought, well, how many stars are there? Well, I looked it up. I looked it up and the European Space Agency says it has been said that counting the stars in the universe is like trying to count the number of sand grains on a beach on the earth. And it goes on to say there's something like 10 to the 12th power, that's 10 with 12 zeros after it. stars in our galaxy. So 10 with 12 zeros. And there are perhaps something like 10 with another 12 zeros galaxies. So I'm not a math person. I always have to remember like which comes first, billion or trillion. So that my math level is, it's just too far in the past, but it's like 10 with 24 zeros after it, like according to the European space agency, a possible number of stars, like 10 trillion trillions. So I just gave up. I started casting my cares. I guess God can keep track of it, right? He calls the stars by name. Psalm 139 says this, how precious to me are your thoughts, O God. How vast is the sum of them. If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake and I am still with you. So God says to us, the Father says to us, I gave you my son. Jesus says to us, I bore your griefs and carried your sorrows. I went to the cross for you. The Spirit says to us, I intercede for you before the Father with groanings too deep for words. God is just telling us, I care, I care, I care. And we're like, Really? You know, that's why we can cast our cares upon God. And maybe that thought needs to be more pervasive in our hearts and minds as we deal with our anxieties because the opposite of that is actually pride. Because we're telling God, well, I'm not sure if you care or if you can really handle these problems. Pride will cut us off from the abundant grace we desperately need to resist the devil in our own flesh. So, like, where do you want to be? It's 2025, where do you want to be? Do you want to be untethered from grace? Do you want to be isolated and vulnerable to the enemy? Left to God to your own way? I want to conclude with this moment in the prophet Samuel. Remember the prophet Samuel? He had a moment in his life where he was looking back on how God had been good to him and the people of Israel. And 1 Samuel 7, 12 says this, a real obscure verse. Samuel took a stone and he set it up between Mizpah and Shen and he called its name Ebenezer, which by the way means stone of help. For he said, till now the Lord has helped us. This is a monument which basically says, hey, God has helped us to this point, isn't God good? What if when the Babylonian envoy came to see Hezekiah, what if Hezekiah would have had more of that response? Instead of like, hey, look at all my stuff, man, I'm good. What if he had said something like, the God of heaven and earth has blessed us beyond measure. He has protected us, he has provided for us. You know, we sing a hymn that expresses that, And we sing this line and we're like, what did I just sing? Here I raise my Ebenezer, my stone of help. Hither by thy help I'm come, and I hope by thy God pleasure safely to arrive at home. One of my favorite musical settings of this is sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. No, I don't agree with their theology. But there's this musical interlude between stanzas. Forgive me for explaining music, okay? But the orchestra is building and building and building, and there's layers and layers of instruments that are being added to the texture. The volume is growing and growing. There are harmonies that create like this tension and longing and yearning, and it gets to the climax of the build to the last stanza, and the tempo begins to slow, which means you're just waiting for what's going to happen in this musical journey, and 350 voices join to sing, oh, to grace. And there's a big bass drum on the word grace. Oh, to grace. How great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee. And that musical setting just points us to this melodic theme, this persistent theme that needs to be a part of our lives. It's a posture that looks like this. God, I need grace. And so here on this first Sunday of January, 2025, assess your posture. I just have like three applications. There's already application in the message, but just what do I do? Well, if you see pride in your life, just repent. I mean, Hezekiah did that. And you've got a God of grace that's going to receive that repentance. So repent of it. Maybe sometime this week, take a few moments to meditate on James 4, passage we talked about, or 1 Peter 5, and ask God, because there's more in there, ask God to show you where there might be surprising pride in your life, and confess that, and ask God for grace. Thirdly, I want to say this. Don't leave in fear and shame. You know, sometimes we hear a message about pride and it's just like, you feel like beaten down, oh man, I'm proud, I'm proud, you know, God's opposing me. James 4, 6 says he gives more grace. He resists the proud, gives grace to the humble, but he gives more grace. The posture of God towards us is yearning for us to come to him. I wanna read this one more passage before we close. This is a wonderful word of comfort from God so that we would not leave in fear and shame. Listen to this, the prophet's words from Isaiah chapter 54. This is the word of God to his people, who are really stubborn people. For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion. You says the Lord, your Redeemer. What comforting words for us and what an incentive for us to keep coming back to God for the abundant grace that we need and that will protect us More than the stuff that we look around and we want, it's the grace that we need. So let's have a word of prayer. God, I thank you that your grace always outpaces your discipline. Your discipline is hard, and it's because of our pride, but your grace is always there to receive us back. And even in the discipline, there is grace. We're thankful for this. We ask that you would give us humble hearts, Like you showed Hezekiah the pride of his heart in your grace, show us areas where there's pride in our own hearts that we might confess and forsake and find your arms willing to receive us. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.