Message 

• Analogy: The Rotten House
• Introduction to Uzziah: Highlight his massive success in agriculture, military, and architecture.
• Every sin is easy to see in our life, but pride is almost impossible to see in ourselves. 

Passage

• 2 Chronicles 26:3-5 (NLT):
  • "Uzziah was sixteen years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-two years. His mother was Jecoliah from Jerusalem. He did what was pleasing in the LORD’s sight, just as his father, Amaziah, had done. Uzziah sought God during the days of Zechariah, who taught him to fear God. And as long as the king sought guidance from the LORD, God gave him success."
• 2 Chronicles 26:16-21 (NLT):
  • "But when he had become powerful, he also became proud, which led to his downfall. He sinned against the LORD his God by entering the sanctuary of the LORD’s Temple and personally burning incense on the incense altar. Azariah the high priest went in after him with eighty other priests of the LORD, all brave men. They confronted King Uzziah and said, 'It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the LORD. That is the work of the priests alone, the descendants of Aaron who are set apart for this work. Get out of the sanctuary, for you have sinned. The LORD God will not honor you for this!' Uzziah, who was holding an incense burner, became furious. But as he was standing there raging at the priests before the incense altar in the LORD’s Temple, leprosy suddenly broke out on his forehead. When Azariah the high priest and all the other priests saw the leprosy, they rushed him out. And the king himself was eager to get out because the LORD had struck him. So King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in isolation in a separate house, for he was excluded from the Temple of the LORD. His son Jotham was put in charge of the royal palace, and he governed the people of the land."
• Isaiah 6:1–7 (NLT)
  • “It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. 2 Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 They were calling out to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Heaven’s Armies! The whole earth is filled with his glory!” 4 Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke. 5 Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the LORD of Heaven’s Armies.” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.

Thoughts

1. Pride is a Phantom
   1. Uzziah started off fearing the Lord and was blessed.
   2. It creeps in - how it slowly grows in our hearts through time
   3. It stays silent
      1. It wears all types of masks
      2. Religious masks - I’m so much holier than them
      3. Humble masks - In my humility, I’m so much better than them
      4. Education masks - I’m a higher echelon of society to them because I’ve got such and such degree
   4. It’s caused by: 
      1. Success
      2. Satan
   5. Key Thought: "Pride progresses stealthily, warping our self-image and making us think we’re above the rules."
2. Pride is a Perspective 
   1. Pride is all about PERSPECTIVE: It’s in the way you think about yourself in comparison to life itself. 
      1. It’s how you view yourself
      2. Inflates one’s view of self.
   2. Uzziah 
      1. Thought the rules didn’t apply
      2. Thought the priests were beneath him
      3. Thought he could treat them as insignificant and with contempt
   3. I am ABOVE the rules
   4. I am ABOVE my neighbor
      1. The greatest way to detect pride is in the way you view OTHERS
      2. COMPARISON
         1. To others
         2. C.S. Lewis: The point is that each person's pride is in competition with every one else's pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive – is competitive by its very nature – while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If someone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. That is why I say that Pride is essentially competitive in a way the other vices are not.
         3. To God
         4. We even begin to compare ourselves with God
            1. We think our thoughts are better
            2. We think our morality is better
            3. Eve “God knows that you will become wise like Him”
      3. CONTEMPT of others
         1. Uzziah treated the other priests with anger and down talk. 
   5. I am ABOVE God
   6. C.S. Lewis Insight: "As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you."
3. Pride invites Punishment
   1. Pride produces actions
      1. It makes us act
      2. It makes God act
   2. The judgment of pride is swift
      1. “I saw Satan fall like lightning”
      2. Nebuchadnezzer going insane
      3. Herod being struck with worms
      4. God actively resists the proud. 
   3. God’s mercy on Uzziah
      1. Leprosy was a slow, yet miserable death. 
      2. God wanted to give Uzziah time to repent and humble himself
      3. He wanted to give us a perspective of what pride does, it rots us
   4. Isolation: Pride isolated Uzziah from the Temple and his community.
4. Pride Has A Prescription
   1. The cure for Pride is
      1. Notice the High One
      2. Notice your state next to Him
      3. Humble yourself
      4. C.S. Lewis Quote: "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less."

Conclusion

• Worship is the solution to pride