Sermon Tone Analysis

Knowing God helps us make good choices

In our study of God, more formally known as Theology, we want to focus on the truth that good theology feeds good choices, bad theology feeds bad choices.

We start where we left off last week.

The Bible tells us that if the rulers of this age knew who Jesus was, they would have made a different choice.

1 Corinthians 2:8 (ESV) —8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Knowing God affects our choices.

This past week Melina Roberge was sentenced to eight years in an Australian court for drug smuggling.

She and her friends tried to bring in 209 pounds of cocaine to sell in Australia.

I don’t know her faith or what she professes.

I will simply put it this way.

If she really knew God she would never do that!

Randa Jarrar, an English professor at Fresno State, when commenting on the death of Barbara Bush just hours after she died said that Barbara was “an amazing racist” who raided a “war criminal.”

If she really knew God and Jesus Christ, she never would have said it, or at least not in the way she did.

If you can imagine any of the bad news that we hear so much, stop and think of this.

What would those people do, what choices would change, if they really knew God?

Knowing God affects our choices.

Isaiah 6:1–13 (ESV) —1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe fillied the temple.

There’s a new king in town!

Uzziah died and the Lord is now sitting on the throne in the temple.

The old king, Uzziah, had been around for a long time.

He was crowned king at the age of 16 and held the post for 52 years.

He died when he was approximately 68 years old.

Uzziah made some bad choices.

He started off making good choices.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

This young man made good choices because he followed God.

In spite of a lifetime of good choices, he made one bad choice that affected his life in a significant way.

Have you ever noticed that one blemish can ruin a lifetime of accomplishments?

Bill Hybels was planning on retiring in October.

News came to light accusing him of sexually inappropriate behavior twenty years ago, a charge he denied.

Things became so bad that he chose to resign two weeks ago instead of dragging the church through a long, drawn-out battle.

I don’t know if he is innocent or guilty, but it doesn’t make any difference in one way.

His reputation is shot!

Uzziah is in the same boat.

A good life is ruined by poor choices.

The poor choices came because he forgot God.

This is the danger of success.

Success can make us prideful.

If you are good at what you do, if you have made your business grow, if all your children are high achievers and are doing well, we can forget God and in our own pride, believe that we are the reason everything turned out good.

We made the right decisions.

We were smart enough, experienced enough to avoid the mistakes that others made and so we flourished.

We are very deceived.

There is no doubt that there is a connection between the choices we made and the success we have enjoyed.

But one reason we make good choices is that we do what God created us to do.

In other words, when we don’t worship money and are responsible stewards, that is what God created us to be.

The reason that we had success in any area is directly tied into the closeness with which we followed God’s blueprint for us.

You say, “What about those who are not Christians who are doing well?”

You look at their lives and even though they are not Christians, they are following Christian principles in their lives.

The reason for their success is due in part to the fact that they are living as God created them to live.

We also benefit from favorable circumstances.

If your child had different friends, he or she might have been pulled down the wrong road.

Our business might have grown because we hit the economy at the right time.

A year later or earlier and we might have had a different outcome.

If one of your mentors had decided not to help you learn and grow, you might not have achieved what you did.

Whatever we do, we need to give credit to God who has blessed us in so many ways.

Paul says, “In everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Uzziah was full of himself.

His success went to his head.

He felt that as king he was entitled.

He was entitled to do anything he wanted.

He was entitled to not only be a king, but be a priest as well.

The priests were the only ones allowed into the temple to burn incense to God.

Uzziah didn’t care.

He was king.

Who said that a person born as a Levite was any better than he was.

He was king and he could do what he wanted.

That was true until God intervened.

He was struck with leprosy or some similar skin disease and banned from the temple for the rest of his life.

In the year that King Uzziah died, he died of leprosy as a judgment from God.

Some of you may say, “That’s an overreaction!”

Before you go any further, let me ask you this question, “Did you ever ask your children to be in bed by 8PM? Were you angry when they were not?”

What is the real difference between 8 and 8:30?

The big difference, you would tell me, is that they knew the bed time, were reminded of it at 7PM, and you had to go down and pull them away from the computer to get them to go.

In other words, it wasn’t the time, it was the intentional disregard of what you asked them that set you off.

I am sure that there were a lot of people who broke God’s laws and didn’t get leprosy.

But Uzziah was the king.

He was a leader of the people.

Azariah came in with eighty other priests to stop him.

Uzziah got angry at the whole group and was just ready to perform a religious duty that God didn’t want him to do and to do it with a crowd of at least 81 people around him.

Before he could act, he was visibly struck with leprosy.

They rushed Uzziah out of the temple.

He went willingly at this point!

He was unable to go into the temple for the rest of his life because he was physically unclean.

There is a direct link between Uzziah’s choice and his death.

Uzziah, according to the account, was proud.

A proud person is focused on themselves.

They resent anyone who doesn’t give them proper attention or is above them.

James 4:6 (ESV) —6 But he gives more grace.

Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Isaiah refers to Uzziah’s death when he writes,

What a contrast.

King Uzziah died.

The Lord lived.

Uzziah died because he should not have been in the temple, The Lord is reigning with life from the temple.

Uzziah was brought down, the Lord was raised up.

Uzziah lost his throne, the Lord sat on a higher throne.

He lost his throne because his theology was bad.

He believed that he knew more than God, was more powerful than God and that he could disobey God with impunity.

He really didn’t know God at all.

He did not know one major truth about God that, if in his heart, would have changed his actions.