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Re: Bulletin Board [message #11594 is a reply to message #11464]

Fri, 05 June 2015 14:10

james
Messages: 2137
Registered: April 2008
Location: Birmingham, AL

Senior Member

God turns around the most powerful of men when he was filled with pride and spoke against God and His people.

james wrote on Fri, 26 December 2014 08:57

Pride in the life of two kings...

"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 16:18

Pride is a sin God hates, it lifts a man up in his own mind to a place of deception and nothing good ever comes from it. In II Chronicles 32 there are two kings described, both allowed pride in their lives at some point, yet they dealt with it differently and their endings reflected it.

Sennacherib was king over Assyria and Hezekiah was king over Judah. Sennacherib in pride and foolishness came against Jerusalem to war against Judah and king Hezekiah. He railed against God announcing in pride of his great conquest among all the other nations he had defeated and their gods. He blasphemed God and tried to turn the hearts of the people from trusting God. Hezekiah and Isaiah prayed for deliverance and God sent an angel and Assyria and Sennacherib was defeated and returned to their own country in shame. And his end came about at the hands of his own people, his pride broken and in shame...because he came against The one true God and His chosen people.

Hezekiah too allowed pride in his life later on. He was given an additional 15 years to life by God after his sickness, but he didn't give glory to God as he should have; pride entered his heart. Yet we're told in II Chronicles 32:26 "Notwithstanding Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of The LORD came not upon them in the days of Hezekiah."

And later in the chapter we're told that Hezekiah was buried in the chiefest of the sepulchers of the kings and he was honored by Jerusalem at his death.

Two kings, different endings due to different choices made in dealing with pride in the heart. Pride blinds, but if a person will humble themselves and turn to God in repentance He will restore, defend, and deliver them.

In Isaiah 37:29&34 God answers Sennacherib's boasting:

"Because thy rage against me, and thy tumult, is come up into mine ears, therefore will I put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest."

"By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith The LORD."

Sennacherib never came into Jerusalem and returned to his own land and was killed at the hands of his own sons while worshipping 'his' god.

“But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,”

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